"So far, I have been thinking of the ways in which you cannot leave," he admitted tartly. "If you'd consent to try my clothes and——"
"Umum," said Mary, shaking her head. "No, no!"
"Then frankly, I don't know what to suggest," said the master of the apartment. "You are not invisible. You cannot walk through the office without being seen, Miss Mary—and once you have done that be sure that your face will be registered in the memory of the employees. You have no idea of moving from New York, I take it?"
"Hardly."
"Then since you will be about town for years, may I point out that each man who sees you will remember, also for years, that you left one of these apartments and——"
He paused, partly in distress and partly because it seemed to him that Wilkins was whispering to somebody. He sat up then, because Wilkins was talking and there was another voice he could not at first place. He had heard it before, many times, and it was very calm, very clear, very determined; and now Wilkins' tone came distinctly and resignedly.
"Well, of course, if he's expecting you, sir——"
The door closed. Steps approached the living-room. And with Mary sitting at the table, coffee-cup in hand, furnishing just the homelike touch a bachelor apartment must normally lack, Hobart Hitchin was with them!
One glance settled the fact that the amateur detective had attained a high state of nervous tension. Behind his spectacles, the keen eyes flashed about like a pair of illuminated steel points; his face seemed tired, but the rest of him was as alive as a steel spring, and his right hand held a fat brief-case.
Had he been more intimately acquainted with Hobart Hitchin, Anthony Fry would have trembled. As it was, he felt merely keen annoyance—and then utter consternation, because Hitchin had stopped with a jerk and was looking straight at Mary.