“But he isn’t any longer?”
“No.” Sam shook his head. “We had to get rid of him.”
“I don’t wonder. A man looking like that....”
“It wasn’t that so much,” said Sam. “The thing that annoyed father was that he tried to shoot Miss Milliken.”
Billie uttered a cry of horror.
“He tried to shoot Miss Milliken!”
“He did shoot her—the third time,” said Sam, warming to his work. “Only in the arm, fortunately,” he added. “But my father is rather a stern disciplinarian and he had to go. I mean, we couldn’t keep him after that.”
“Good gracious!”
“She used to be my father’s stenographer, and she was thrown a good deal with Peters. It was quite natural that he should fall in love with her. She was a beautiful girl, with rather your own shade of hair. Peters is a man of volcanic passions, and, when, after she had given him to understand that his love was returned, she informed him one day that she was engaged to a fellow at Ealing West, he went right off his onion—I mean, he became completely distraught. I must say that he concealed it very effectively at first. We had no inkling of his condition till he came in with the pistol. And, after that ... well, as I say, we had to dismiss him. A great pity, for he was a good clerk. Still, it wouldn’t do. It wasn’t only that he tried to shoot Miss Milliken. The thing became an obsession with him, and we found that he had a fixed idea that every red-haired woman who came into the office was the girl who had deceived him. You can see how awkward that made it. Red hair is so fashionable now-a-days.”
“My hair is red!” whispered Billie pallidly.