's all," she told him in a tone of
dismissal, and waited openly for him to go. Which he did, after a sly
glance at Evadna, a licking of pale lips, as if he would speak but
lacked the courage, and a leering grin at Miss Georgie.

He was no sooner over the threshold than she slammed the door shut,
in spite of the heat. She walked to the window, glanced down the track
again, turned to the table, and restlessly arranged the form pads,
sticking the message upon the file. She said something under her breath,
snapped the cover on the inkwell, sighed, patted her pompadour, and
finally laughed at her own uneasiness.

"Whenever that man comes in here," she observed impatiently, "I always
feel as if I ought to clean house after him. If ever there was a human
toad--or snake, or--ugh! And what does he mean--sending twenty-word
messages that don't make sense when you read them over, and getting
others that are just a lot of words jumbled together, hit or miss? I
wish--only it's unprofessional to talk about it--but, just the same,
there's some nasty business brewing, and I know it. I feel guilty,
almost, every time I send one of those cipher messages."

"Maybe he's a detective," Evadna hazarded.

"Maybe." Miss Georgie's tone, however, was extremely skeptical. "Only,
so far as I can discover, there's never been anything around here to
detect. Nobody has been murdered, or robbed, or kidnapped that I ever
heard of. Pete Hamilton says not. And--I wonder, now, if Saunders could
be watching somebody! Wouldn't it be funny, if old Pete himself turned
out to be a Jesse James brand of criminal? Can you imagine Pete doing
anything more brutal than lick a postage stamp?"

"He might want to," Evadna guessed shrewdly, "but it would be too much
trouble."

"Besides," Miss Georgie went on speculating, "Saunders never does
anything that anyone ever heard of. Sweeps out the store, they say--but
I'd hate to swear to that. _I_ never could catch it when it looked
swept--and brings the mail sack over here twice a day, and gets one
to take back. And reads novels. Of course, the man's half dead with
consumption; but no one would object to that, if these queer wires
hadn't commenced coming to him."

"Why don't you turn detective yourself and find out?" Plainly, Evadna
was secretly laughing at her perturbed interest in the matter.

"Thanks. I'm too many things already, and I haven't any false hair or
dark lantern. And, by the way, I'm going to have the