Margaret Hefferman’s placid face was a little pale when she greeted him in the ladies’ room of the department store a short time later.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Blaine!” she exclaimed, but in carefully lowered tones. “I could have cut my right hand off before I would hurt Miss Lawton after all she has done for me, and already the first thing she asks, I must fail to do!”
“You are sure you were not followed?” asked the detective, disregarding her lamentations with purposeful brusqueness, for the tears stood in her soft, bovine eyes, and he feared an emotional outburst which would draw down upon them the attention of the whole room.
“Oh, no! I made sure of that. I rode uptown and half-way down again to be certain, and then changed to the east-side line.”
“Very well.” He drew her to a secluded window-seat where, themselves almost unseen, they could obtain an unobstructed view of the entrance door and of their immediate neighbors.
“Now tell me all about it, Miss Hefferman.”
“It was that office boy, Billy,” she began. “Such sharp eyes and soft walk, like a cat! Always he is yawning and sleepy––who would think he was a spy?”
Her tone was filled with such contempt that involuntarily the detective’s mobile lips twitched. The girl had evidently quite lost sight of the fact that she herself had occupied the very position in the pseudo employ of Bertrand Rockamore which she derided in his office boy.
He did not attempt to guide her in her narrative of the morning’s events, observing that she was too much agitated to give him a coherent account. Instead, he waited patiently for her to vent her indignation and tell him in her own way the substance of what had occurred.