“Very well. I will meet you in twenty minutes at your Working Girls’ Club. I am an architect, remember, and you wish to build a new and more improved institution of the same order on another site. Therefore, you have met me there to show me over the old building and suggest changes in its plans for the new one. You understand, Miss Lawton? My name is Banks, remember, and––be a few minutes late.”
“I understand perfectly. Thank you. Good-by.”
The receiver at the other end of the line clicked abruptly, and the detective sprang to his feet.
A quarter of an hour later Blaine presented himself at the Anita Lawton Club, where a trim maid ushered him into a tiny office. There, behind the desk, sat a girl, and at sight of her, the detective, master of himself as he was, gave an imperceptible start.
There was nothing remarkable about her; she was quite a common type of girl: slender, not too tall, with a wealth of red-brown hair, and soft hazel eyes; yet she reminded Blaine vaguely but insistently of some one else––some one whom he had encountered in the past.
He recovered himself at once, and presented the card 55 which announced him as the senior member of the firm of Banks and Frost, architects.
“Whom did you wish to see, sir?” The girl turned slowly about in her swivel chair and regarded him respectfully but coolly. Her voice was low and gentle and distinctly feminine, yet it brought to him again that haunting sense of resemblance which the first vision of her had caused.
“Miss Lawton,” he replied, quietly.
“But Miss Lawton is not here.” The girl’s surprise was unfeigned.
“I have an appointment to meet her here at this time. She may perhaps have been detained. She has arranged to go over the club building with me. As you see by my card, I am an architect and she is planning more extensive work, I believe, along the lines instituted here––at least that is the impression she has given my firm. I will wait a short time, if I may. You are connected with the official work of the club?”