“Oh, they all call me that,” said the boy indifferently. “You see, they’re bound to stick a label on to a fellow with an initial like mine. Some of them call me ‘Tin and Copper Anderson,’ but most of them—the other name.”
“You’re a rum kid,” said his cousin. “You can come to lunch with me.”
CHAPTER IV
MR. ALFRED CARTWRIGHT had the enviable faculty of placing outside of his mind all subjects and persons which were unpleasant to think upon. Possessing this power, he could as lightly dismiss the memory of responsibilities, pleasant or unpleasant. He had scarcely left London before he had waived Master T. A. C. Anderson into oblivion. To do him justice, he had certainly speculated vaguely upon assuring his cousin’s future; but his mind was so completely occupied with his own that there was really not room for both—and Take A Chance Anderson had to go.
He reached Paris by the evening train, and drove straight to the apartment he had taken for his new protégé. He found her installed in a very comfortable flat on the unfashionable side of the Seine, and was welcomed with relief.
Miss Sadie O’Grady had not entirely overcome her suspicions of the bona fides of her newfound acquaintance. Yet, since he had not made love to her, but, on the contrary, had made it very clear that the part he expected her to play in his schemes involved no loss of self-respect, she was becoming reconciled to a relationship which, to say the least, was a strange one. She had established herself in a third-floor office on one of the boulevards, an uncomfortable and unaccustomed figure in an environment which was wholly foreign to her experience, though there was no need for her embarrassment, since she constituted the whole of the staff, and the callers were confined to the postman and the concierge who acted as office-cleaner.
She was to learn, however, that a daily attendance at her “bureau” did not constitute the whole of her duties, or fulfil all Cartwright’s requirements.
It was not until after dinner that night that Cartwright revealed himself.
“Sadie, my young friend,” he said, between puffs of his cigar, “I am going to tell you just what I want you to do.”
“I thought I knew,” she said, on her guard, and he laughed softly.