"And, say! You'll have to hurry," he said, pressing the advantage my quiet demeanor offered. "Here! Take this hunk o' copy paper and hike!"

I accepted the proffered paper, still hypnotized, then when I had reached the door I stopped.

"Understand, Mr. Hudson, I'm doing this because you have a.s.signed it to me!" I said with a cutting severity. "Please let that be perfectly plain! I shouldn't go a step toward Loomis--not even if it were a matter of life and death--if it were _not_ a matter of urgent business!"

He looked at me blankly for a moment, then grinned. Afterward I realized that he knew this declaration was being made to my own inner consciousness, and not to him.

"Don't ask him for a photograph--for G.o.d's sake!" he called after me, from the head of the steps. "Remember--you're going out there on the _Herald's_ account and the _Herald_ doesn't need his picture, because it happens that we've already got a dandy one of him!"

I turned back fiercely.

"I hadn't _dreamed_ of asking him for his photograph!" I fired. "I hope I have some vestige of reasoning power left!"

At the corner a car to Loomis was pa.s.sing, and once inside I inspected every pa.s.senger in the deadly fear of seeing some one whom I knew.

There was no one there, however, who could later be placed on the witness-stand against me, so I sat down and watched the town outside speeding by--first the busy up-town portion, then the heavy wholesale district, with its barrels tumbling out of wagon ends and its mingled odor of fruit, vinegar and mola.s.ses, combined with soap and tanned hides. After this the river was crossed, we sped through a suburban settlement, out into the open country, then nearer and nearer and nearer.

All the time I sat like one paralyzed. I hated intensely the thought of going out there, but the very speed of the car seemed to furnish excuse enough for me not to get off! I didn't have will power enough to push the bell, so when the greasy terminal of the line was reached I rose quietly and left the car along with a number of men in overalls and a bevy of tired dejected-looking women.

"They ought to call it 'Gloom-is,'" I muttered, as I alighted at the little wooden station, where one small, yellow incandescent light showed you just how dark and desolate the place was. "And these people live here!--I'll never say a word against West Clydemont Place again as long as I live!"

Without seeming to notice the gloom, the people who had come out on the car with me dispersed in different directions, two or three of the men making first for the shadow of a big brick building which stood towering blackly a little distance up from the car tracks. I followed after them, then stopped before a lighted door at this building while they disappeared into a giant round-house farther back. The whir of machinery was steady and monotonous, and it served to drown out the noise my heart was making, for I was legitimately frightened, even in my reportorial capacity, as well as being embarra.s.sed and ashamed, independent of the _Herald_. It was a most unpleasant moment.

"This must be the office!"

The big door was slightly ajar, so I entered, rapping with unsteady knuckles a moment later against the forbidding panels of another door marked "Private."

"Well?"

"Well" is only a tolerant word at best--never encouraging--and now it sounded very much like "Go to the devil!"

"I don't give a rap if he _is_ the Vice-President and General Manager of the Consolidated Traction Company," I muttered, the capital letters of his position and big corporation, however, pelting like giant hailstones against my courage. "I'm Special Feature Writer for _The Oldburgh Herald_!"

"If you've got any business with me open that door and come in!" was the further invitation I received. "If you haven't, go on off!"

The invitation wasn't exactly pressing in its tone, but I managed to nerve myself up to accepting it.

"But I have got some--business with you!" I gasped, as I opened the door.

Mr. Tait turned around from his desk--a worse-looking desk by far than the one I had left at the _Herald_ office.

"Good lord--that is, I mean to say, _dear_ me!" he muttered, as he wheeled and saw me. "Miss Christie!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "This must be the office"]

"Are you so surprised--then?"

"Surprised? Of course, a little, but--no-o, not so much either, when you come to think of it!"

The room was bare and barn-like, with a couple of shining desks, and half a dozen chairs. A calendar, showing a red-gowned lady, who in turn was showing her knees, hung against the opposite wall. Mr. Tait drew up one of the chairs.

"Thank you--though I haven't a minute to stay!"

I stammered a little, then sat down and scrambled about in my bag for a small fan I always carried.

"A minute?"

"Not long, really--for it's getting late, you see!"

My fingers were twitching nervously with the fan, trying to stuff it back into the bag and hide that miserable copy paper which had sprung out of its lair like a "jack-in-the-box" at the opening of the clasp.

He smiled--so silently and persistently that I was constrained to look up and catch it. He had seemed not to observe the copy paper.

"If you're in such a hurry your '_business_' must be urgent," he said, and his tone was full of satire.

"It is, but--"

I looked at him again, then hesitated, my voice breaking suddenly.

Somehow, I felt that I was a thousand miles away from that magic spot on the Nile where the evening before had placed me. He looked so different!

"You needn't rub it in on me!" I flashed back at him.

His chair was tilted slightly against the desk, and he sat there observing me impersonally as if I were a wasp pinned on a cardboard.

He was looking aloof and keenly aristocratic--as he was at the entrance of the conservatory the evening before.

"Rub it in on you?"

"I mean that I didn't want to come out here to-night!"

My face was growing hot, and try as I would to keep my eyes dry and professional-looking something sprang up and glittered so bewilderingly that as I turned away toward the lady on the calendar, she looked like a dozen ladies--all of them doing the hesitation waltz.

He straightened up in his chair, relieving that impertinent tilt.

"Oh,--you didn't want to come?"

"Of course not!"

I blinked decisively--and the red-gowned one faded back to her normal number, but my eyelids were heavy and wet still.

"But--but--"

"Please don't think that I came out here to-night because I wanted to see you, Mr. Tait!" I was starting to explain, when he interrupted me, the satire quite gone.

"But, after all, what else was there to do?" he asked, with surprising gentleness.

"What else?"

"Yes. Certainly it was _your_ next move,--Grace!"