"Lockwood brought me down from the Canadian Northern offices in Winnipeg. He said he'd give me a chance in the East—the chance of my life."
"What were you in his office?"
"I suppose you'd call it private secretary. But I don't think he knew what I was himself."
"And he let you overwork yourself?"
"No, I can't say that. It wasn't his fault. You see, his work this summer kept him out at the coast a good deal of the time. He had an English mining engineer named Carlton looking over some British Columbia interests."
"And you carried on the office work while Lockwood was out west?"
"I did what I could to keep my end of the thing going. But, you see, it was all so new to me. I hadn't got deep enough into the work to organize it the way I wanted to. There were a lot of little things that couldn't be organized."
"Why not?"
"Well, this man Carlton, for instance, had Lockwood's office look after his English mail. All his letters had to be sent on to whatever point he reported from."
"Well?"