The woman looked at me. She was a bit hard-mouthed, with iron-gray hair, but her eyes looked as though they'd seen a lot and learned not to flinch, though they still felt like it. I knew that kind of look—I'd seen it at the Cruelty.
"What an unpleasant job this of yours is," I said to her, smiling up at her for all the world as that tike of a baby had smiled at me, and watching her melt just as I had. "I'll not make it a bit harder. This thing's all a mistake. Which way? ... I'll come back, Mr. Tausig, to receive your apology, but you can hardly expect me to go to lunch after this."
He growled a wrathful, resenting mouthful. But he looked a bit puzzled just the same.
He looked more puzzled yet, even bewildered, when we came back into the main office a quarter of an hour later, the woman and I, and she reported that no paper of any kind had she found.
Me? Oh, I was sweet amiability personified with the woman and with the Sergeant, who began to back-water furiously. But with Tausig—
What? You don't mean to say you're not on, Mag? Oh, dear, dear, it's well you had that beautiful wig of red hair that puts even Carter's in the shade; for you'd never have been a success in—in other businesses I might name.
Bamboozled the woman? Not a bit of it; you can't deceive women with mouths and eyes like that. It was just that I'd had a flash of genius in the minute I heard Tausig's voice, and in spite of my being so sure he wouldn't have me arrested I'd— Guess, Mag, guess! There was only one way.
The baby, of course! In the moment I had—it wasn't long—I'd stooped down, pretending to kiss that cherub good-by, and in a jiffy I'd pinned that precious paper with a safety-pin to the baby's under-petticoat, preferring that risk to—
Risk! I should say it was. And now it was up to Nance to make good.
While Tausig insisted and explained and expostulated and at last walked out with the Sergeant—giving me a queer last look that was half-cursing, half-placating—I stood chatting sweetly with the woman who had searched me.