He sprang to the door and locked it and turned on the girls. Tavia slipped instinctively behind a chair, but Dorothy stood her ground, facing the enraged man with courage and aloofness.
“You can’t frighten me, Mr. Akerson,” she said to him. White with rage the man approached nearer and nearer to Dorothy.
“Just what do you mean?” he asked, and there was that in the cool, and incisive quality of his tones that made both girls feel, if they had not before, that they had rather undertaken too much in coming to the office.
There was silence for a moment in the office, a silence that seemed yet to echo to the rasping of the lock in the door, a sound that had a sinister meaning. And yet it seemed to flash to Dorothy that, at the worst, the man could only frighten them—force them, perhaps, to some admission that would make his own case stand out in a better light, if it came to law procedings.
Too late, Dorothy realized, as perhaps did Tavia, that they had been indiscreet, from a legal standpoint, in thus coming into the camp of an enemy, unprotected by a lawyer’s advice.
All sorts of complications might ensue from this hasty proceeding. Yet Dorothy, even in that moment of trouble, realized that she must keep her brain clear for whatever might transpire. Tavia, she felt, might do something reckless—well meant, no doubt, but none the less something that might put a weapon in the hands of the man against whom they hoped to proceed for the sake of Aunt Winnie.
“Just what do you mean?” snapped the man again, and he seemed master of the situation, even though Dorothy thought she detected a gleam of—was it fear? in his eyes. “I am not in the habit of being spoken to in that manner,” he went on.
“I am afraid I shall have to ask you to explain yourself. It is the first time I have ever been accused of wrongdoing.”
“I guess it isn’t the first time it has happened, though,” murmured Tavia.
“What’s that?” demanded the man, quickly turning toward her. Even bold Tavia quailed, so menacing did his action seem.