“As you have never seen me until this afternoon, and I only moved over from—well, let’s call it the Borough of Queens—last month, how could you know where I live?” queried Brownell, looking up with a quizzical expression, and passing over the first part of her speech, not because he did not heed it, but for the reason of a certain Indian instinct he had of picking up trails as he went along, that helped him not a little in his work.
Lucy flushed furiously, this time to the roots of her hair, sought refuge for a single instant in subterfuge, but finding herself fairly caught, throwing her head up, stood with hands again clasped behind her, and lips parted, smiling at the man who had already gone two steps downward on the stairs when she had called the halt.
“You say that you are seeking for truth with a fountain pen and a stenographer’s note-book, also Brooke says that I always speak the truth—attention! I saw your address in your hat this afternoon!”
Brownell, who was at that moment holding his hat against his chest, looked anxiously at the top of the crown, wondering if it had become transparent.
“No, I didn’t see through the hat, it’s not my way; I looked in it when you were out of the room, because I wanted to know where it was bought! A woman can tell a great deal by that! The biped I call a man never buys a department-store hat, for instance, he’d rather wear a second-hand one first. Well, yours did not come from a department store, neither was it second-hand; in fact, it was painfully new, address and all!”
Then Lucy Dean turned on her heel with right-about-face rapidity and vanished around the corner of the corridor; while Tom Brownell, half angry, half fascinated, and wholly amazed, went down the marble stairs two steps at a time, a difficult feat, and one that would have made the very correct man at the door suspect that the visitor had been summarily ejected, if it had not been for the expression of Brownell’s face, which, by the time he reached the bottom stair, wore a decidedly satisfied smile.
CHAPTER VIII
TRANSITION
When Lucy Dean returned to the den, she found Brooke leaning upon the desk, her head still pillowed by her arms, and fast asleep. Checking her first impulse to waken Brooke and discuss the episode of the reporter, Lucy stood thinking a moment, looked at the clock, then, drawing a sheet of paper toward her, wrote a few words upon it in vigorous upright characters, placed it where the sleeper could not fail to see it the moment her eyes opened, and, after rearranging her furs, that she had thrown off when she had returned from her walk, vanished from the room.