"Harvey Grimm is my name," the new-comer went on, "Mr. Harvey Grimm, if you please, of Chicago. You remember me now, without a doubt?"
He extended his hand confidently. His smile was ingratiating, his air that of an ingenuous child anxious for a favourable reception. Aaron Rodd slowly thrust out his ink-stained fingers.
"I remember you all right," he admitted.
The visitor, having established his identity, seemed disposed to abandon the subject. He glanced around the room, and, discovering a cane-bottomed chair on which were piled some dust-covered documents, he calmly swept them away, annexed the chair, which he carefully flicked around with a silk handkerchief, and brought it to the side of the desk.
"Sit down, my dear fellow, I beg you," he invited, laying his hat on the floor by his side, hitching up his blue serge trousers and smiling in momentary satisfaction at his well-polished shoes. "I have appropriated, I fancy, the client's chair. Am I right, I wonder, in presuming that there has not been much use for it lately?"
"Perfectly right," was the grim reply.
"Hard times these have been for all of us," Harvey Grimm declared, with an air of placid satisfaction. "You are not expecting a client this morning, I presume?"
"Nor a miracle."
"In that case I will smoke," the new-comer continued, producing a small, gold case, selecting a cigarette and lighting it. "Try one."
Aaron Rodd hesitated and finally accepted the offer. He smoked with the air of one unused to the indulgence.