Broffin was digging in his pocket for a card. It was not often that he was constrained to introduce himself formally, and for an awkward second or two the search was unrewarded. When he finally found the bit of pasteboard he was explaining verbally.
"I know well enough where your father's office is, but you are the one I wanted to see," he said; and he gave her the round-cornered card with its blazonment of his name and employment.
He was watching her narrowly when she read the name and its underline, and the quick indrawing of the breath and the little shudder that went with it were not thrown away upon him. But the other signs; the pressing of the even teeth upon the lower lip and the coming and going of three straight lines between the half-closed eyes were not so favorable.
"Will you come into the house, Mr.——" she had to look at the card again to get the name—"Mr. Broffin?" she asked.
"Thank you, Miss; it's plenty good enough out here for me if it is for you," he returned, beginning to fear that the common civilities were giving her time to get behind her defences.
She made way for him on the porch and pointed to a chair, which he took, damning himself morosely when he caught his foot in the porch rug and knocked the book from its resting-place on the railing.
"It is no matter," she said, when he would have gone outside to recover the book; but he knew from that moment that whatever advantage a fair beginning may give was gone beyond recall.
"I guess we can take it for granted that you know what I want, Miss Farnham," he began abruptly, when he had shifted his chair to face her rocker. "Something like three months ago, or thereabouts, you went into a bank in New Orleans to get a draft cashed. While you were at the paying teller's window a robbery was committed, and you saw it done and saw the man that did it. I've come to get you to tell me the man's name."
If he had thought to carry the defences by direct assault he was quickly made to realize that it could not be done. Miss Farnham's self-possession was quietly convincing when she said:
"I have told it once, in a letter to Mr. Galbraith."