be with Mr.
Peterman. Don't ring me unless it's something important. That summary.
Is it ready?"

"It's being checked right now."

"Well, speed them up. You can send it up directly it's through. Mr.
Peterman is needing it."

Nancy passed out of the room. Her discipline was strict. Sometimes it
approached severity. But she understood its necessity for obtaining
results. Her orders would be carried out.

* * * * *

Elas Peterman set the 'phone back in its place. His dark eyes were
smiling. They were shining, too, in a curious, not altogether wholesome
fashion. He had just finished talking to Nancy McDonald, and he was
thinking of the vision of red hair, of the serious hazel eyes gazing out
of their setting of fair, almost transparent complexion.

He took up his pen to continue the letter he had been writing. But he
added no word. The girl he had been speaking with still occupied his
thoughts to the exclusion of all else.

He was a good-looking man, clean cut and youthful. His profile was
finely chiselled. But his Teutonic origin was clearly marked. It was in
the straight square back of his head. It was in the prominent, heavily,
rounded chin, and the squareness of his lower jaw. Furthermore, the
high, mathematical forehead was quite unmistakable. There was power,
force, in the personality of the man. But there was something else. It
lay in his mouth, in his eyes. The former was gross, and definite
sensuality looked out of the latter.

As the door opened to admit Nancy his pen promptly descended on his
paper. But he did not write. He looked up with a smile.

"Come right in, my dear," he said cordially, with the patronising
familiarity of a man conscious of his power. "Just sit right down while
I finish this letter." Then he added gratuitously, "It's a rude letter
to a feller I've no use for; and I don't guess to rob myself of the
pleasure of passing it plenty to him--in my own handwriting."

Nancy smiled as she took the chair beside the desk which was usually
assigned to her in her intercourse with her chief.

"I wish I felt that way writing a bad letter," she said. "But I don't.
It just makes me madder with folks, and I go right on thinking things,
and--and--it worries."

Elas Peterman shook his head.

"Guess you'll get over that, my dear," he said easily. "Sure you will.
You're just a dandy-minded kid, learning the things of life. You feel
good most all the time. That's how