Betty started indignantly to speak, but checked the words which had risen to her lips. After a pause, she said quietly:
"No, but I fancied someone called."
"Oh, that was just somebody laughing, Miss. They're playing cards, Welch tells me."
Betty bade the woman a brief goodnight and closing her door, locked it with an emphatic click. The cry still echoed in her ears. Muffled as it had been, she recognized the voice of Mrs. Dana, and knew that no mirth had sounded in its shrill crescendo, but stark terror. Was a fresh tragedy being enacted below?
One point, at least, was clear beyond further doubt; the espionage and surveillance had been no vain imagining. The woman outside her door was there as jailor, not servitor. She herself, was a virtual prisoner!
CHAPTER IV.
Blindfold.
The offices of the Joseph P. McCormick Detective Agency, Incorporated, occupied the entire nineteenth floor of the Leicester Building and more nearly resembled those of a potentate of finance than a private investigator. The Chief's sanctum was protected by a series of smaller communicating offices presided over by subordinates of ascending rank and importance, through whose hands the visitor, client or culprit, must pass before gaining audience with the great man himself; a process which tended either to crush or irritate the stranger, according to his temperament.
The lady who sent in her card to the Chief on a certain crisp morning in late winter, however, seemed to find food for amusement in the ceremonious progression. She was of the type which proclaims rather than admits age, but in spite of her snow-white hair, her tall figure was as erect as that of a girl and her snapping gray eyes behind the gold pince-nez were neither dimmed nor mellowed by time.
A dry smile tightened the fine lines about her lips as she was ushered into the last of these offices, which served as an ante-chamber to the supreme consulting room. A slim, mild-looking youth with the face of a student was seated behind a typewriter table and raised his eyebrows superciliously as he greeted her with the question which through reiteration had appealed to her sense of humor.