at down beside the desk. She continued to study his face
frankly, with a half-shy, half-defiant scrutiny, as if she banished a
natural diffidence under pressure of necessity.

She spoke again, abruptly.

"I wish to procure peculiar services. Are you a very well-known
detective?"

"I have never called myself a detective," said Garrison. "I'm trying
to occupy a higher sphere of usefulness. I left college a year ago,
and last week opened my office here and became a New Yorker."

He might, in all modesty, have exhibited a scrap-book filled with
accounts of his achievements, with countless references to his work as
a "scientific criminologist" of rare mental attainments. Of his
attainments as a gentleman there was no need of reference. They
proclaimed themselves in his bearing.

His visitor laid a glove and a scrap of paper on the desk.

"It isn't so much detective services I require," she said; "but of
course you are widely acquainted in New York--I mean with young men
particularly?"

"No," he replied, "I know almost none. But I know the city fairly
well, if that will answer your purpose."

"I thought, of course--I hoped you might know some honorable---- You
see, I have come on rather extraordinary business," she said, faltering
a little helplessly. "Let me ask you first--is the confidence of a
possible client quite sacred with a man in this profession?"

"Absolutely sacred!" he assured her. "Whether you engage my services
or not, your utterances here will be treated as confidential and as
inviolate as if spoken to a lawyer, a doctor, or a clergyman."

"Thank you," she murmured. "I have been hunting around----"

She left the sentence incomplete.

"And you found my name quite by accident," he supplied, indicating the
scrap of paper. "I cannot help observing that you have been to other
offices first. You have tramped all the way down Broadway from
Forty-second Street, for the red ink that someone spilled at the
Forty-first Street crossing is still on your shoe, together with just a
film of dust."

She withdrew her shoe beneath the edge of her skirt, although he had
never apparently glanced in that direction.

"Yes," she admitted, "I have been to others--and they wouldn't do. I
came in here because of the name--Jerold. I am sorry you are not
better acquainted--for my business is important."

"Perhaps if I knew the nature of your needs I might be able to advise
you," said Garrison. "I hope to