By B. R. Stevens
The typewriters were clicking busily in the place. Every one seemed honestly, industriously at work.
Looking out of the aperture prepared for the purpose, Lance Allison saw nothing suspicious. Yet Monsieur the General had been so sure that information was leaking, in some mysterious way, from this very room.
Lance had been surprised that the fame of an American detective should have made any impression in France: more surprised when the General, on learning his identity, had personally solicited his aid.
Sitting with ears as well as eyes alert, his quick brain began to dissociate the sound of the typewriters one from another.
That tall girl in black—the one with the pale, pale face, he amended in his thought, so many, alas! were in black—that girl wrote with an even monotony in consonance with her expressionless countenance.
The pert little lass in blue seemed to write each word with an emphasis, for her spacing was noticeable each time.
And so it went, each typist showing some marked peculiarity as his ear picked out the particular rhythm.
His examination had reached the last one, and for the first time he observed its operator closely.... Something familiar and different about that girl.... Not her clothes, nor her coiffure—nothing he could put a finger on.
Then he caught the click of her machine. Different from any of the others, it seemed to jerk out the words and syllables with amazing irregularity, dwelling on one letter, slighting another, pausing between. Here, too, was something hauntingly familiar.