They reached the head of the stairs, and Ronicky Doone paused. To go down was to face the mysterious chief whom he had no doubt was the old man to whom Harry Morgan had already referred. In the meantime the conviction grew that this was indeed Caroline Smith. Her free-and-easy way of talk was exactly that of a girl who might become interested in a man whom she had never seen, merely by letters.
"I want to talk to you," said Ronicky, muffling his voice. "I want to talk to you alone."
"To me?" asked the girl, turning toward him. The light from the hall lamp below gave Ronicky the faintest hint of her profile.
"Yes."
"But the chief?"
"He can wait."
She hesitated, apparently drawn by curiosity in one direction, but stopped by another thought. "I suppose he can wait, but, if he gets stirred up about it—oh, we'll, I'll talk to you—but nothing foolish, Harry. Promise me that?"
"Yes."
"Slip into my room for a minute." She led the way a few steps down the hall, and he followed her through the door, working his mind frantically in an effort to find words with which to open his speech before she should see that he was not Harry Morgan and cry out to alarm the house. What should he say? Something about Bill Gregg at once, of course. That was the thing.
The electric light snapped on at the far side of the room. He saw a dressing table, an Empire bed covered with green-figured silk, a pleasant rug on the floor, and, just as he had gathered an impression of delightful femininity from these furnishings, the girl turned from the lamp on the dressing table, and he saw—not Caroline Smith, but a bronze-haired beauty, as different from Bill Gregg's lady as day is from night.