"I wonder why they ship that kind of freight in refrigerator cars—the rate is much higher," I said, shoving the telegram back unopened.
"I think I heard him tell Mr. Burrell one day he could afford to pay extra in order to receive his freight the same day," she replied with a naïveté difficult to simulate.
"Miss Bascom, stop the work you are now on and prepare an abstract from these records of all freight sent by refrigerator cars to Becker & Co. during the last twelve months," I requested after weighing the chance that she might be working with Becker and Chief Clerk Burrell and the disadvantage of their knowing through her that an investigation was proceeding along those lines.
Miss Bascom seemed unwilling to think the interview ended or perhaps was disappointed it had yielded so little, but finally removed her elbow, and, nonplussed, passed her small white hand over her eyes and hair, so unusually bronze that one might suspect that it was "chemically pure." As she slowly passed behind me to her desk she half murmured to herself, "I wish I were a man."
"I suppose you would be wearing a soldier's uniform if you were," said I, assuming a semi-preoccupied attitude.
"That's on the basis that a uniform makes a dull person look intelligent," she rejoined, looking seriously out of the window over her desk.
I was reading my telegram and was too much astonished at its contents to reply. It was from the chemist in New York to whom I had sent a larger sample from the partnership barrel Hiram and I had in storage.