g as his homely room. He dropped the
visitor's coat and hat on a worn leather couch, which seemingly served
him as a bed, and waved a hospitable hand toward an easy-chair.
Simultaneously, he casually indicated a figure bending over a table on
the opposite side of the room.

"My secretary," he murmured.

The figure at the table rose and bowed, then sat down again and
continued its apparent occupation of sorting squares of paper into a
long, narrow box. In the one glance Laurie gave it, as he returned the
other's bow with a casual nod, he decided that the "secretary" was
arranging a card-catalogue. But why the dickens should Shaw have a
secretary? On the other hand, why shouldn't he?

Laurie began to feel rather foolish. For a few moments, in that hall, he
had actually been on the point of taking Shaw seriously; and an
aftermath of this frame of mind had led him to turn a suspicious regard
on a harmless youth whose occupation was as harmless as he himself
looked. Laurie mentally classified the "secretary" as a big but meek
blond person, who changed his collars and cuffs every Wednesday and
Sunday, and took a long walk in the country on Sunday afternoons.

However, the fellow had pursuing eyes. Evidently his work did not need
his whole attention, for his pale blue eyes kept returning to the guest.
Once Laurie met them straight, and coolly stared them down. After this
they pursued him more stealthily. He soon forgot them and their owner.

Despite Shaw's hospitable gestures, Laurie was still standing. He had
chosen a place by the mantel, with one elbow resting upon it; and from
this point of vantage his black eyes slowly swept the room, taking in
now all its details--a type-writer, a letter-file, a waste-paper basket
that needed emptying, a man's worn bedroom slipper coyly projecting from
under the leather couch, a litter of newspapers.

It was all so reassuringly ordinary that he grinned to himself. Whatever
hold this little worm had on Doris--Shaw had even ceased to be a snake
at this point in Laurie's reflections--would be loosed after to-night;
and then she could forget the episode that had troubled her, whatever it
was.

At precisely this point in his meditations Laurie's eyes, having
completed a tour of the room and returned to the fireplace, made two
discoveries. The first was that the room had no windows. The second, and
startling one, was that it contained Doris's photograph. The photograph
stood on the mant