Miss Lida Kennard, as confidential stenographer, was deep into the methods of Mern. It was Mern’s unvarying custom to have Miss Kennard in to listen to and take down all that a client had to state. She was extremely shocked in the first stages of her association with the Vose-Mern agency by the nature of the commissions undertaken. But it was the best position she had secured, after climbing the ladder through the offices of more or less impecunious attorneys. She needed the good pay because her mother was an invalid; she continued to need the pay after her mother died. There were bills to be settled. She had grown used to setting the installments on those bills ahead of new hats, and the cameo ring which had been her mother’s keepsake was for the sake of memory, not adornment.
By dint of usage, the Vose-Mern business had come to seem to her like a real business. Certainly some big men came and solicited Mern’s aid and appeared to think that his methods were proper. In course of time, listening to Mern’s ethics, she came to accept matters at their practical value and ceased to analyze them for the sake of seeking for nice balances of right and wrong. She was in and of the Vose-Mern organization! She sat in on conferences, wrote down placidly plots for doing up men who had not had the foresight to hire Mern—Vose had been merely an old detective, and he was dead—and she sometimes entertained a vague ambition to be an operative herself. She liked pretty hats and handsome rings—though she was scornfully averse to the Leigh-Javotte system as she was acquainted with it by the chance remarks the associates dropped. As to operatives—Miss Kennard had heard—well, she had heard Miss Elsham, for instance, a crack operative, reveal what the rewards of the regular work were; and, the way Miss Elsham looked at it, a girl did not have to lower her self-respect.
In the midst of these thoughts, getting a side glance at the new hat which Miss Leigh was showing to Miss Javotte, Miss Kennard was called to conference; the buzzer summoned her.
Mern introduced her to the client of the day; the chief made that his custom; it always seemed to put the client more at his ease because an introduction made her an important member of the party—and Mern stressed the “confidential secretary” thing.
The client was Director Craig of the Comas company.
He rose with a haste which betrayed a natural susceptibility to the charms of pretty women. He cooed at her rather than spoke, altering his natural tone, smoothing out all the harshness; it was that clumsy gallantry by which coarse men strive to pay court to charm.
The girl warranted the approving gaze which Mr. Craig gave to her. He looked from her frank eyes to her copper-bronze hair, which seemed to have a glint of sunshine in its waves. He liked the uplift of that round chin—he remembered that it had seemed to indicate spirit—and he liked spunk in a girl. He had enjoyed the conferences of the days of the strike-breaking when he could survey her profile as she busied herself with her writing, admiring the beauty curve of her lips.
Now he was thrilled by her manner of recognition; he had not expected that much.
“I remember you, Mr. Craig,” she assured the big man, her fingers as firm in the grip as were his. “You were in here so much on the strike matter two years ago.”
“That’s a long time for a New York young lady to remember a man from the north woods.”