Miss Hollowell laughed.
"Oh, very well then. Perhaps some other time, but we're especially busy to-day, so I'm going to ask you to excuse us. Good-day."
She turned back to the papers on her desk, her pencil poised above a sheet of estimates.
Katy pushed Sunny forward, and in dumb show signified that she should speak. Miss Hollowell glanced up and regarded the girl with singular attention. Something in the expression, something in the back of the secretary's mind that concerned Japan, which this strange girl had now mentioned caused her to wait quietly for her to finish the sentence. Sunny held out the letter, and Miss Hollowell saw that fine script upon the envelope, with the Japanese letters down the side.
"This are a letter from Japan," said Sunny. "If you please I will lig' to give those to Sen—Thad is so big a name for me to say." The last was spoken apologetically and brought a sympathetic smile from Miss Hollowell.
"Can't I read it? I'm sure I can give you what information you want as well as Mr. Wainwright can."
"It are wrote in Japanese," said Sunny. "You cannot read that same. Please you let me take it to thad gentleman."
Miss Hollowell, with a smile, arose at that plea. She crossed the room and tapped on the door bearing the Senator's name.
Even in a city where offices of the New York magnates are sometimes as sumptuously furnished as drawing rooms, the great room of Senator Wainwright was distinctive. The floor was strewn with priceless Persian and Chinese rugs, which harmonised with the remarkable walls, panelled half way up with mahogany, the upper part of which was hung with masterpieces of the American painters, whose work the steel magnate especially favoured. Stephen Wainwright was seated at a big mahogany desk table, that was at the far end of the room, between the great windows, which gave upon a magnificent view of the Hudson River and part of the Harbor. He was not working. His elbows on the desk, he seemed to be staring out before him in a mood of strange abstraction. His face, somewhat stony in expression, with straight grey eyes that had a curious trick when turned on one of seeming to pin themselves in an appraising stare, his iron grey hair and the grey suit which he invariably wore had given him the name of "The Man of Steel." Miss Hollowell, with her slightly professional smile, laid the slip of paper on the desk before him.
"A Miss Sindicutt. She has a letter for you—a letter from Japan she says. She wishes to deliver it in person."