"Not a soul, but it's no trick to get letters of introduction—even for Mrs. Mabel Kennedy."
"Fine! Go to it! The minute you get 'em start a social campaign here. Stage several luncheons, bridge parties, and the like. Be sure to create the impression of a woman of means—and if you can drop a few hints about your none too spotless past, so much the better."
"You want to draw their fire, eh?"
"Precisely. It's unfortunate that we can't rig up a husband for you—that would make things easier, but when it's known that I, Alvin Gregg, am your brother, I think it's more than likely that they'll risk a couple of shots."
It was about a month later that Mrs. Kennedy called up her brother at the Hotel Majestic and asked him to come over to her apartment at once.
"Something stirring?" inquired Allison as he entered the drawing-room of the suite which his assistant had rented in order to bolster up her social campaign.
"The first nibble," replied the girl, holding out a sheet of violet-tinted paper, on which appeared the words:
Of course your brother and your friends know all about the night you spent alone with a certain man in a cabin in the Sierras?
"Great Scott!" ejaculated Allison. "Do you mean to say it worked?"
"Like clockwork," was the girl's reply. "Acting on your instructions, I made a special play for Snaith, the postmaster's confidential secretary and general assistant. I invited him to several of my parties and paid particular attention to what I said when he was around. The first night I got off some clever little remark about conventions—laughing at the fact that it was all right for a woman to spend a day with a man, but hardly respectable for her to spend the evening. The next time he was there—and he was the only one in the party who had been present on the previous occasion—I turned the conversation to snowstorms and admitted that I had once been trapped in a storm in the Sierra Nevadas and had been forced to spend the night in a cabin. But I didn't say anything then about any companion. The third evening—when an entirely different crowd, with the exception of Snaith, was present—some one brought up the subject of what constitutes a gentleman, and my contribution was a speech to the effect that 'one never knows what a man is until he is placed in a position where his brute instincts would naturally come to the front.'