stenographer or secretary, looked coolly
competent in her white shirt-waist and well-made skirt. I was
surprised to find a young woman of her evident education and refinement
in the employ of such a man.

"Did you give him my message?" I asked.

"Yes. He said he was not interested."

I felt vaguely disappointed that my strategy had not worked. I had
given the name of Anderson, and had represented myself as the head of
the Steamfitters' Union of Cleveland, anxious for instructions on how
to settle a labor problem in our local union. I had done this, feeling
that if I gave my own name, he might refuse to see me. Apparently my
alias was to have no better success.

"When will he be free, can you tell me?"

"I couldn't say," the girl answered. "He is very busy at present, but
if you will come in and wait, perhaps he may see you later."

It seemed to me there was the faintest suggestion of a smile on the
girl's face as I stepped across the threshold into the small
waiting-room, but I hadn't a chance to observe more closely, for she
turned her back on me at once and immediately resumed her typewriting.

The room in which I found myself was one of a dingy suite in an old
warehouse that had been converted into a newspaper building to house
_The Uplift_, a weekly paper, edited by a Russian Jew named Borsky and
financed by Schreiber. It was a typical anarchistic sheet, and had
been suppressed for a time, during the war. Opposite where I sat was a
door from which the paint had peeled in places. This evidently led
into Zalnitch's office, for I could hear the murmur of voices behind
it. The rooms were ill-lighted and unclean, and it made me mad to see
as nice a girl as the stenographer working herself to death in such
dingy surroundings and for such a man as Zalnitch.

I watched her as she worked and marveled that any one could make her
fingers go so rapidly. I noticed with admiration and dissatisfaction,
that unlike my stenographers, she didn't have to stop to erase a
misspelled word every two minutes. I wondered what salary Zalnitch
paid her and if she would like to change employers.

"I hope you will pardon my interrupting your work--" I began.

"You're not," the girl responded, without even glancing up.

"May I ask if you are entirely satisfied with your employment here?"

"Why do you ask?" she inquired, stopping for a moment and fixing me
with clear gray eyes.

"I am badly in need of a competent steno