Embarrassed by the long silence, Shirley finally broke it by saying:
"But you didn't ask me to call merely to find out what I thought of my own work."
"No," replied Ryder slowly, "I want you to do some work for me."
He opened a drawer at the left-hand side of his desk and took out several sheets of foolscap and a number of letters. Shirley's heart beat faster as she caught sight of the letters. Were her father's among them? She wondered what kind of work John Burkett Ryder had for her to do and if she would do it whatever it was. Some literary work probably, compiling or something of that kind. If it was well paid, why should she not accept? There would be nothing humiliating in it; it would not tie her hands in any way. She was a professional writer in the market to be employed by whoever could pay the price. Besides, such work might give her better opportunities to secure the letters of which she was in search. Gathering in one pile all the papers he had removed from the drawer, Mr. Ryder said:
"I want you to put my biography together from this material. But first," he added, taking up "The American Octopus," "I want to know where you got the details of this man's life."
"Oh, for the most part—imagination, newspapers, magazines," replied Shirley carelessly. "You know the American millionaire is a very overworked topic just now—and naturally I've read—"
"Yes, I understand," he said, "but I refer to what you haven't read—what you couldn't have read. For example, here." He turned to a page marked in the book and read aloud: "As an evidence of his petty vanity, when a youth he had a beautiful Indian girl tattooed just above the forearm." Ryder leaned eagerly forward as he asked her searchingly: "Now who told you that I had my arm tattooed when I was a boy?"
"Have you?" laughed Shirley nervously. "What a curious coincidence!"
"Let me read you another coincidence," said Ryder meaningly. He turned to another part of the book and read: "the same eternal long black cigar always between his lips…" "General Grant smoked, too," interrupted Shirley. "All men who think deeply along material lines seem to smoke."
"Well, we'll let that go. But how about this?" He turned back a few pages and read: "John Broderick had loved, when a young man, a girl who lived in VERMONT, BUT CIRCUMSTANCES SEPARATED THEM." He stopped and stared at Shirley a moment and then he said: "I loved a girl when I was a lad and she came from Vermont, and circumstances separated us. That isn't coincidence, for presently you make John Broderick marry a young woman who had money. I married a girl with money."