Prepared as he had been to be surprised, he had not expected this businesslike manifestation. He went to the wall, following her directions, and threw on the lights.
"Only the side lights," she said. "That's it. Shall we sit here?"
She took her position by the reading-table in a great high-backed upholstered arm-chair. Obeying her gesture, he drew up his chair to a position opposite. In the varied experiences of thirty years, he had come into contact with women of all walks of life. Without the psychological analysis of subtleties of the lawyer and the novelist, he had an unerring instinct for the crux of character. "Is she good or is she bad?" was the question that, in ninety cases out of a hundred, he put to himself at the turning-point of his campaigns. For the first time, despite his previous prejudice, he was in doubt for an answer, but he recognized in her at once the stamp of that superior brood which raises some men to fame and fortune where others by one trait of conscience or weakness end in a disgraceful failure.
"I have wanted to meet you for a long time, Mr. McKenna," she said directly, but without the accompanying smile of feminine flattery. "Mr. Slade has told me much about you."
"Slade?" he said, with a quick simulation of surprise, while admiring the abruptness, amazing in a woman, with which she had launched her attack.
"You realize, of course, Mr. McKenna," she continued quietly, without giving him time to deny her first implication, "that Mr. Beecher, in engaging you, has, quite without his knowledge, brought on a situation that is very embarrassing to me."
"Good!" thought the detective. "She has made up her mind to tell the whole story." Aloud he said, without change of expression: "In what way, Mrs. Kildair?"
"A situation exists which makes it extremely difficult for me to recover my ring without disclosing to the public matters in my own private life that at present are liable to great misconstruction."
She spoke professionally, without variation in her voice, as a doctor speaking with dispassionate directness. McKenna did not answer, resolving by his silence to force her to talk.
"A week," she continued without pause, though her eyes remained without wavering on his, "—ten days at the most—may completely change this position. I won't conceal from you that I am extremely sorry that you have been brought into the case." McKenna could not control an expression of surprise. "But, now that you are in it, I shall be forced to give you a confidence against my inclination."