The room was quite deserted; but promptly from an adjoining chamber there came a lean-faced young man of inquiring blue eyes, who courteously greeted her.
“Is Mr. Barry in?” she asked. “Mr. Herbert Barry?”
“I am Herbert Barry,” he said.
“Oh!” Surprised, she eyed the slim young man half incredulously. He seemed scarcely more than a boy. “Mrs. Franklin Parker told me about you—recommended you very highly. Perhaps that is why,” she added, with a smile, “I expected to find an older man.... I suppose most of the people who come to see you are in trouble of some sort. I am not in trouble, exactly, but—” She glanced around the office. “May I have a word with you in privacy?”
He held open the door to the adjoining room. “Suppose we step in here? My stenographer is at lunch. There’s no danger of our being disturbed.”
Preceding him into the inner office, she bade him lock the door; and, thus assured of their safety from interruption, she sat nervously on the edge of a chair and faced him across the flat-top desk. There clung to her, somehow, a subtle suggestion of wealth and luxury, and her well-chiseled features denoted good breeding. Subtle, too, was the delicate odor of violets that fragrantly touched his nostrils as she leaned toward him across the desk. Then he noticed she wore a rich cluster of the flowers upon her mauve silk waist.
He observed, also, the purplish shadows beneath her large brown eyes, her half-frightened, half-worried demeanor and her air of suppressed excitement, as though she were struggling to control some inner perturbation.
“Perhaps I’ve made a mistake,” she began, “in coming here. I don’t know. But I’ve been so perplexed, so utterly mystified, by some strange things that have happened lately—Did you ever hear of Willard Clayberg?” she broke off suddenly to ask.
Barry knitted his brows. The name had a familiar sound.