quickly, but it was so elusive, so faint, that he could not be certain;
and reassured by his impassive face he went on:

"Why shouldn't they? What would anybody waste sympathy on her kind for?"
His thin lips curled contemptuously.

Again Prentiss sat in the stillness in which not a muscle or an eyelid
moved. He seemed even not to breathe until he turned with an impressive
deliberateness and subjected Toomey to a scrutiny so searching and
prolonged that Toomey colored in embarrassment, wondering the while as
to what it meant.

"I presume, Mr. Toomey," Prentiss finally inquired with a careful
politeness he had not shown before, "that it would mean considerable to
you in the way of commissions on the sale of stock if this project went
through?"

Toomey's relief that he had not inadvertently given offense was so great
that he almost told the truth as to the exact amount. Just in time he
restrained himself and replied with elaborate indifference:

"I'd get something out of it for my time and work, of course, but,
mostly, I'm anxious to see a friend get hold of a good thing."

This fine spirit of disinterested solicitude met with no response.

"I presume it's equally true, Mr. Toomey, that the completion of the
project means considerable to the town?"

"Considerable!" with explosive vehemence. "It's got where it's a case of
life or death. The coyotes'll be denning in the Security State Bank and
the birds building nests in the Opera House in a year or two, if
something don't turn up."

"How soon can you furnish me with the data you may have on hand?"

"About six minutes and four seconds, if I run," Toomey replied in
humorous earnestness.

Prentiss's face did not relax.

"Get it and bring it to my room--at once." His voice was cold and
businesslike, strongly reminiscent now of Kate's.

CHAPTER XXX

HER DAY

Kate stood before a teetering knobless bureau reflecting upon the
singular coincidence which should place her in the same room for her
second social affair in the Prouty House as that to which she had been
assigned upon her first. The bureau had been new then and, to her
inexperienced eyes, had looked the acme of luxurious magnificence. She
recalled as vividly as though the lapse of time consisted of days, not
years, the round eager face, that had looked out of the glass.

She had been only seventeen--that other girl--and every emotion that she
felt was to be read in her expressive face and in he