"Chewing up a missionary
Skin and bones and hymn book, too."
Her inveterate evenness of spirit amounted almost to a failing; but now, for the first time, she became conscious of latent impulses of a vindictive and murderous kind.
Back in her own room, she hastily packed a suit-case with her most necessary belongings.
CHAPTER TEN
I
About a week later, a tall, thin, immaculate gentleman, in a suit of neutral taupe, entered the offices of the Evening Chronicle. A stand-up collar slightly tip-tilted his chin. But his expression was a friendly, not a haughty one. His small roving gray eyes looked around with a humorous inquisitiveness, as if they wondered what their immaculate owner could possibly hope to find in such a sloppy, disorderly place.
In due time, a slovenly office boy stopped pounding on a typewriter and showed the stranger to an inner office. Here Hutchins Burley penned those inimitable effusions on "the ethereal feminine" which gave the Saturday special half a million female and male readers. It was an army that ran the Saturday Evening Post brigade a close second, and rendered Burley's professional position unassailable.
The roving gray eyes saw the swollen bulk of Mr. Hutchins Burley, squatting like a giant toad behind a roll-top desk and pawing over a visiting card.
"Well, Mr. Pryor?" said the pillar of the Evening Chronicle, with no waste of civility. "What d'you want?"
"Frankly, I want Mr. Robert Lloyd's job."