like me."

Covington bade them good-morning and returned to his office fairly well
satisfied. The danger of the present situation had been minimized. He
felt sure that Alice would not go out of her way to acquaint her father
with the name of the stock by which her property would be handsomely
increased, and he knew that Gorham's mind was too full of other matters
to press her for the details unless she volunteered them. But he must
be more discreet, this he realized. If the matter could be dropped here,
he would have learned a useful lesson; and then, too, the interview had
not been without a suggestion which was well worth following up. It
occurred to Covington, in view of Brady's remark, that he had been
unpardonably obtuse in neglecting to acquaint himself with the details
of Mrs. Gorham's early life. He knew vaguely that she had been the
victim of unpleasant experiences before her present marriage, but what
they were he had never learned. There might be something in them which
it would be to his advantage to know, and it could surely do no harm to
make a quiet investigation.

On the following day, Covington found himself in front of an
old-fashioned brick building standing almost significantly in the shadow
of the Tombs. He paused for a moment to wonder at the enormous gaudy
sign, "Levy & Whitcher's Law Offices," running across the front and side
of the edifice, which impressed him with a sense of its vulgarity. The
door creaked as Covington opened it and passed on into the dingy
offices--even dingier than the nature of the business done in them
required, because of the dirt-trodden floors and their unwashed windows.
He pushed his way through the bunch of process-servers, messengers, and
clerks who littered up the outer office, almost tripping over a torn
law-book on the floor, and finally found his way to the waiting-room of
Mr. Levy's private sanctum in the rear. Here he was subjected to a
careful scrutiny by the lawyer's "secretary," whose personal appearance
seemed to indicate greater familiarity with the prize ring than with
clerical labors. There may have been method in his selection, as Mr.
Levy was a gentleman whose professional life had been spent in
undertakings which a conservative insurance company might classify under
"hazardous risks."

Levy had reached a point in his career when he could afford to keep his
clients waiting. He and his partner, during the twenty-five years they
had been together, ha