"It's about--about Mr. Cowler and last night." She paused.

"Oh," asked Mr. Warner, carelessly, casually, "did you have a pleasant evening?"

"It's about that I wanted to talk with you," Susannah faltered.

Suddenly, her embarra.s.sment broke, and she became perfectly composed.

"Mr. Warner, I dislike to tell you all this, because I know how it will shock you to hear it. But you will understand that I have no choice in the matter. It is very hard to speak of, and I don't know exactly how to express it, but, Mr. Warner, Mr. Cowler insulted me grossly last evening ... so grossly that I left the table where we were eating after the theater and ... and ... well, perhaps you can guess my state of mind when I tell you that I was actually afraid to take a taxi. Of course, I see now how foolish that was. But I ... I ran all the way home."

For an instant, Mr. Warner's fine, incisive geniality did not change.

Then suddenly it broke into a look of sympathetic understanding. "I am sorry, Miss Ayer," he declared gravely, "I am indeed sorry." His clergyman aspect was for the moment in the ascendent. He might have been talking from the pulpit. His voice took its oratorical tone. "It seems incredible that men should do such things--incredible. But one must, I suppose, make allowances. A rural type alone in a great city and surrounded by all the intoxicating aspects of that city. It undoubtedly unbalanced him. Moreover, Miss Ayer, I may say without flattery that you are more than attractive. And then, he is unaccustomed to drinking--"

"Oh, he had not drunk anything to speak of," Susannah interrupted. "A little claret at dinner. He had ordered champagne, but this ... this episode occurred before it came."

"Incredible!" again murmured Mr. Warner. "Inexplicable!" he added. He paused for a moment. "You wish me to see that he apologizes?"

"I don't ask that. I am only telling you so that you may understand why I can never speak to him again. For of course I don't want to see him as long as I live. I thought perhaps ... that if he comes here again ...

you might manage so that he doesn't enter through my office."

"We can probably manage that," Mr. Warner agreed urbanely. "Of course we can manage that. He is, you see, a prospective client, and a very profitable one. We must continue to do business with him as usual."

"Oh, of course!" gasped Susannah. "Please don't think I'm trying to interfere with your business. I understand perfectly. It is only that I--but of course you understand. I don't want to see him again." She rose. Her lithe figure came up to the last inch of its height; the att.i.tude gave her the effect of a column. Her head was like a glowing alabaster lamp set at the top of that column. All the trouble had faded out of her face. The set, scarlet lines in her mouth had melted to their normal scarlet curves. The light had come back in a brilliant flood to her turquoise eyes. In this uprush of spirit, her red hair seemed even to bristle and to glisten. She sparkled visibly. "And now, I guess I'll get back to work," she said. "Oh, by the way, I found in my mail this morning a letter addressed, not to the women's department, but to the firm. I opened it, but of course by accident."

Mr. Warner drew the letter from its envelope, began casually running through it. The conversation seemed now to be ended; Susannah moved toward the door. From his perusal of the letter, Mr. Warner stabbed at her back with one quick, alarmed glance, and:

"Oh, Miss Ayer, don't go yet," he said. His tone was a little tense and sharp. But he continued to peruse the letter. As he finished the last page, he looked up. Again, his tone seemed peculiar; and he hesitated before he spoke.

"Er--did you make out the signature on this?" he asked.

"No--it puzzled me," replied Susannah.

"Sit down again, please," said Mr. Warner. Now his manner had that accent of suavity, that velvety actor quality, which usually he reserved solely for women clients. "I'm awfully sorry, but I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to see Mr. Cowler again."

"Mr. Warner, I ... I simply could not do that. I can never speak to him again. You don't know.... You can't guess.... Why, I could scarcely tell my own mother ... if I had one...."

"It seems quite shocking to you, of course, and--Wait a moment--" Mr.

Warner rose and walked toward the door leading to Byan's office. But he seemed suddenly to change his mind. "I know exactly how you must feel,"

he said, returning. "Believe me, my dear young lady, I enter perfectly into your emotions. Shocked susceptibilities! Wounded pride! All perfectly natural, even exemplary. But, Miss Ayer, this is a strange world. And in some aspects a very unsatisfactory one. We have to put up with many things we don't like. I, for instance. You could not guess the many disagreeable experiences to which I submit daily. I hate them as much as anyone, but business compels me to endure them. Now you, in your position as manager of the Women's Department--"

"Nothing," Susannah interrupted steadily, "could induce me knowingly to submit again to what happened last night. I would rather throw up my job. I would rather die."

"But, my dear Miss Ayer, you are not the only young lady in this city who has been through such experiences. If women will invade industry, they must take the consequences. Actresses, shopgirls, woman-buyers accept these things as a matter of course--as all in the day's work.

Indeed, many stenographers complain of unpleasant experiences. You have been exceedingly fortunate. Have we not in this office paid you every possible respect?"

"Of course you have! It is because you have been so kind that I came to you at once, hoping ... believing ... that you would understand. It never occurred to me that you...."

"Of course I understand," Mr. Warner insisted, in his most soothing tone. "It's all very dreadful. What I am trying to point out to you is that whatever you do or wherever you go in a great city, the same thing is likely to happen. I am trying to prove to you that you are especially protected here. You like your work, don't you?"

"I love it!" Susannah protested with fervor.

"Then I think you will do well to ignore the incident. Come, my child,"--Mr. Warner was now a combination of guiding pastor and admonishing parent,--"forget this deplorable incident. When Mr. Cowler comes in this afternoon, meet him as though nothing had happened.

Undoubtedly he is now bitterly regretting his mistake. Unquestionably he will apologize. And the next time he asks you to go out with him, he will have learned how to treat a young lady so admirable and estimable, and you can accept his invitation with an untroubled spirit."

"If I meet Mr. Cowler I will treat him exactly as though nothing had happened," Susannah declared steadily. "I mean that upon meeting him I will bow. I will even--if you ask it--give him any information he may want about the business. But as to going anywhere with him again--I must decline absolutely."

"But that is one of the services which we shall have to demand from time to time. Clients come to town. They want an attractive young lady, a lady who will be a credit to them--a description which, I may say, perfectly applies to you--to accompany them about the city. That will be a part of your duties in future. Had the occasion arisen before, it would have been a part of your duties in the past. If Mr. Cowler asks you again to accompany him for the evening, we shall expect you to go."

"You never told me," said Susannah after a perceptible interval, during which directly and piercingly she met Mr. Warner's gentle gaze, "that you expected this sort of thing."

"My dear young lady," replied Mr. Warner with a kind of bland elegance, "I am very sorry if I did not make that clear."

"Then," said Susannah--so unexpectedly that it was unexpected even to herself--"I shall have to give up my position. Please look for another secretary. I shall consider it a favor if you get her as soon as possible."

Another pause; and then Mr. Warner asked:

"Would you mind waiting here for just a few moments before you make that decision final?"

"I will wait," agreed Susannah. "But I will not change my decision."

Mr. Warner did not seem at all surprised or annoyed. He arose abruptly, started toward Byan's office. This time he entered and closed the door behind him. A moment later, Susannah realized from the m.u.f.fled sounds which filtered through the part.i.tion that the partners were in conference. She caught the velvety tones of Byan; O'Hearn's soft lilt.

And as she sat there, idly tapping the desk with a penholder, something among the memories of that confused morning crept into her mind; spread until it blotted out even the memory of Mr. Cowler. That letter--what did it mean? In her listless, inattentive state of mind, she had opened it carelessly, read it through before she realized that it was addressed not to the Women's Department, but to the company. Had anyone asked her, a moment after she laid it down, just what it said, she could not have answered. Now, her perplexed loneliness brought it all out on the tablets of her mind as the chemical brings out the picture from the blankness of a photographic plate. She glanced at the desk. The letter was not there--Mr. Warner had taken it with him.

The man with the illegible signature wrote from Nevada. He had seen, during a visit to Kansas City, the circulars of the Carbonado Mining Company. After his return, he had pa.s.sed through Carbonado. "I wondered, when I saw your literature, whether there had been a new strike in that busted camp," he wrote. "There hadn't. Carbonado now consists of one store-keeper and a few retired prospectors who are trying to sc.r.a.pe something from the corners of the old Buffalo Boy property. That camp was worked out in the eighties--and it was never much but promises at that." As for the photographs which decorated the Carbonado Company's circulars, this man recognized at least one of them as a picture of a property he knew in Utah. Finally, he asked sarcastically just how long they expected to keep up the graft. "It's the old game, isn't it?" he inquired, "pay three per cent for a while and then get out with the capital." Three per cent a month--that _was_ exactly what the Carbonado Company was paying. She wondered--

Conjecture for Susannah would have been certainty could she have heard the conversation just the other side of that closed door. At the moment when the contents of this letter flashed back into her mind, the letter itself lay on Mr. Byan's polished mahogany table. Beside it lay a pile of penciled memoranda through which fluttered from time to time the nervous hand of H. Withington Warner. Susannah would scarcely have known her genial employer. The mask of actor and clergyman had slipped from his face. His cheeks seemed to fall flat and flabby. His eyes had lost their benevolence. His mouth was set as hard as a trap, the corners drooping. Across the table from him, too, sat a transformed Byan. His smooth, regular features had sharpened to the likeness of a rat's. His voice, however, was still velvety; even though it had just flung at Warner a string of oaths.

"I told you we ought to've let go and skipped six weeks ago," he said, "that was the time for the touch-off. Secret Service still chasin'

Heinies--everythin' coming in and nothin' going out. The suckers had already stopped biting and then you go and hand out two more monthly dividends and settle all the bills like you intended to stay in business forever. What did we want with this royal suite here, and ours a correspondence game? What do we split if we stop today? Twelve hundred dollars. Twelve hundred dollars! We land this Cowler--see!"

Warner, unperturbed, swept his glance to O'Hearn, who sat huddled up in his chair, searching with his glance now one of his partners, now the other.

"Mike," he said, "you're certain about your tip on the fly cops?"

"Dead sure!" responded O'Hearn. "The regular bulls ain't touching mining operations just now. It's up to the Secret Service. In two weeks more they'll be all cleaned up on the war, and then they'll be reorganizing their little committee on high finance. That there Inspector Laughlin will take charge. He knows you, Boss. Then"--O'Hearn spread his hands with a gesture of finality--"about a week more and they'll get round to us. Three weeks is all we're safe to go. They stop our mail and then--the pinch maybe. The tip's straight from you-know-who. The pinch--see!"

At the repet.i.tion of that word "pinch," Byan's countenance changed subtly. It was as though he had winced within. But he spoke in his usual velvety tone.

"Less than three weeks--h'm! How much is Cowler good for?"

"About a hundred thou'--big or nothing," replied Warner. He was drawing stars and circles on the desk blotter. "He can't be landed without the girl. If he'd tumbled for the Lizzies you shook at him--but he didn't--it's this red-headed doll in our office or nothing. And I've told you--"

Here O'Hearn threw himself abruptly into the conversation.

"Lave out th' girrul," he said. Usually O'Hearn's Irish showed in his speech only by a slight twist at the turn of his tongue. Now it reverted to a thick brogue. "I'll not have anythin' to do--"

"We'll leave in or take out exactly what I say," put in Warner smoothly.

"Exactly what I say," he repeated. At this direct thrust, Byan lifted his somewhat dreamy eyes. He dropped them again. Then Warner, his gaze directly on O'Hearn's face, made a swift, sinister gesture. He drew a forefinger round his own throat, and completed the motion by pointing directly upward. O'Hearn, his face suddenly going a little pale, subsided. Warner broke into the sweet, Christian smile of his office manner. Subtly, he seemed to take command. His personality filled the room as he leaned forward over the table and summed everything up.

"As for your noise about quitting six weeks ago," he said, "how was I to know that the suckers were going to stop running? We looked good for three months then. We've got three weeks to go. All right. As for the pinch, they won't get us unless the wad gives out. Every stage of this game has been submitted to a lawyer. We're just a hair inside--but inside all the same. _But_ if we can't come through liberally to him when we're really in trouble, we might as well measure ourselves for stripes. He's that kind of lawyer. With a hundred thousand dollars--" he seemed to roll that phrase under his tongue--"we can stay and make snoots at the Secret Service or beat it elsewhere, just as we please.

Ozias Cowler can furnish the hundred thou'. But he'll take only one bait. I've tried 'em all--flies, worms, beetles, and gra.s.shoppers--and there's only one. And that one is trying to wriggle off the hook. I thought last night when I sent her out with him that maybe she would fall for him. The rest would have been easy. But she only worked up a case of this here maidenly virtue. On top of that, she reads this letter. Of course, she has read it, though she don't know I know. I squeezed that out of her.