The daughter who had asked for bread and had been given a stone put her face in her hands and moved toward the door. But at the last moment she turned again like a spiteful little tiger-cat at bay.
"You think I can't prove it? That is where you fall down. I can convince Mr. Randolph if I choose to try. And that isn't all: I can tell him how you have planned to sell Mr. Galbraith a tract of 'virgin' pine that has been culled over for the best timber at least three times in the past five years!"
Jasper Grierson started from his chair and made a quick clutch into smoky space. "Madge—you little devil!" he gritted.
But the grasping hands closed upon nothing, and the sound of the closing door was his only answer.
When she had unhitched the little Morgan and had driven away from the bank, Miss Grierson did a thing unprecedented in any of her former grapplings with a crisis—she hesitated. Twice she drove down Sioux Avenue with the apparent intention of stopping at the Daily Wahaskan building, and twice she went on past with no more than an irresolute glance for the upper windows beyond which lay the editorial rooms and the office of Mr. Carter Randolph, the owner of the newspaper. But on the third circuit of the square, decision had evidently come to its own again. Turning the mare into Main Street, she drove quickly to the Winnebago House and drew up at the carriage step. A bell-boy ran out to hold the horse, but she shook her head and called him to the wheel of the phaeton to slip a coin into his hand and to give him a brief message.
Two minutes after the boy's disappearance, Broffin came out and touched his hat to the trim little person in the basket seat.
"You wanted to see me, Miss Grierson?" he said, shelving his surprise, if he had any.
"Yes. You are Mr. Matthew Broffin, of the Colburne Detective Agency, are you not?" she asked, sweetly.
Broffin took the privilege of the accused and lied promptly.