“By the way, there were two reporters clamouring at the lift when I went out, one actually trying to bribe the boy to tell whether your father was really here in the apartment. I sent them scurrying in a hurry, I can tell you. Listen! I believe that there is another at the door now; anyway, some one is asking for you. I think I heard the words Daily Forum,” and Lucy pulled aside the curtain, and going to the angle in the hallway peered down its length to where the maid was talking in whispers to a tall somebody in pantaloons.
“Yes, it is a reporter,” said Lucy, stepping back noiselessly. “Sellers is trying to shoo him out, but he’s all inside the door and asking, not a bit humbly, to see ‘a member of the family.’ Watch and see how long it will take me to get rid of him,” and Lucy pulled on and buttoned her gloves, which, on coming in, she had begun to take off, with a gesture as though fists were to take part in the encounter, if necessary.
Brooke, who had been listening to Lucy, yet not looking at her, with eyes fixed on the crumpled paper before her, suddenly sprang to her feet, the warning flash returning to her eyes, saying: “Don’t go; I will see this man myself, and please remember, Lucy, whatever I may say or do, you are not to speak. No, don’t leave the room. I want you to stay by me, but this matter of father’s feigning illness is an affair of honour that only one of the family can conduct.”
Going quickly down the hall, she relieved the harassed maid by indicating to the visitor that he was to follow her, at the same time making a gesture to caution silence, as she guided him back to the den.
What he first saw on entering the room was the tall, straight figure of a young woman, back turned, half a hat and one cheek outlined against the lace drapery, through which she was looking into the street with a frozen fixedness, as if her very life depended upon not moving or turning the fraction of an inch. His second glance rested on the other woman, who, having preceded him, was standing by the desk corner, half supporting herself by it. She raised her head with its wreath of ash-brown hair proudly, and looked him in the face with eyes in which anger struggled with a pleading expression, in keeping with the heavy shadows that underlay them.
After moistening her lips once or twice nervously, Brooke spoke: “You asked to see one of the family, and said it was important that you should. If you are a gentleman, as you appear to be, of course you would not have come at such a time on trivial business. I am Brooke Lawton; what do you wish to ask?”
For an instant the young fellow hesitated, thoroughly abashed; he had met with a variety of experiences in following his vocation of news collecting, but never before had he felt so much like beating a retreat, or his errand seemed so intrusive. Without any special claim to good looks or great stature, he had a certain clear-cut distinctiveness of feature, a mouth that stood the harsh test of the shaved upper lip, and eyes that, though they opened lengthwise rather than wide, looked as if they would take in the surroundings and atmosphere as well as the main object on which they were focussed.
While he hesitated the newspaper which Brooke still clutched attracted him, and as he read its title he divined that Brooke had overheard the name he had just given the maid at the door and already associated him with the sneering article. Laying the card, which the maid had refused, upon the table, he said quietly, but with an earnestness that carried conviction: “I am Tom Brownell of the Daily Forum, the sheet you have in your hand. I know that there was a nasty leader in this morning’s issue that was slipped in, no one seems to know how, by some one who had animus or was hard hit in this T. Y. D. Q. deal. We pride ourselves upon getting at the truth of things that concern the public, so I have come here to settle for once and all the question of Mr. Lawton’s reported serious illness, by direct communication with some one of his family.”