The door closed softly as I dropped into the soft enfoldment of a pillow-lined barrel chair. Abruptly I sat up, staring at the blank face of the closed door, my eyes large and round.
She had called me by name!
I was still staring at the door when it jerked open. Dr. Leopold Moriss strode in closing it after him, his steps and motions jerky and swift.
"Well, well, well," he said. "So you came after all."
"How did your daughter know my name?" I asked.
His shoulders arched back in a gesture of amusement.
"She should know," he said. "I've done nothing but talk about January Stevens this and January Stevens that for the past two months."
"Two months?" I echoed dumbly.
"The detective agency I put on the job of finding you did an almost impossible job," he went on, in high good humor. "They followed you from the time you moved out of your bachelor apartment three years ago, to Los Angeles, Seattle, through Kansas, and right back here to Chicago again. When they found you they came and got me, and pointed you out to me in the park."
"I don't get it," I said, bewildered. "That kind of a search would cost plenty. After paying that kind of dough I can understand your willingness to throw two hundred after it in a—childish gesture. But why? Since you know me, you must know I was kicked out of the Bentley Research Laboratories because I refused to account for five thousand dollars of research funds."