somebody in there had locked the door.

Who had let him in? What man had access to these offices? Can you see me
as I sat listening to O'Mally and thinking of the fresh guy who'd wanted
to take me out to dinner? Lord, I felt queer!

And I felt queerer, considerable queerer, when the day after that I got
hold of Troop--_and_ information. Wait till I tell you.

Mr. Whitney had told me to take my time, there was no rush, and above
all things not to raise the ghost of a suspicion in Troop's mind. So I
went about it very foxy, lying low in my little den behind the
elevators. But when I'd see Troop, lounging in the door of his car, I'd
flash a smile at him and get a good-natured grin back.

The eveningmentioning the failure of the Azalea Woods
Estates and that she thought she and her mother would return to the
country. I was on the verge of offering to finance her in a new deal and
then remembered I was there as an emissary, not as a friend. It rattled
me and the rattling wasn't helped when I met her eyes, brown and soft,
but with something scrutinizing and watchful under their velvety
darkness.

I stayed longer than I meant to--longer than I needed to. Some way or
other our talk shifted round to Azalea and Longwood, to Firehill and the
people we knew all through there. I forgot about the matter I'd come on,
and she brightened up too and there was a gleam of the girl I'd met a
year ago. But when I rose to leave