hining new
penny?"

"I've known Bill Sanderson since I was born," the unseen lips informed
him truculently, even as the unseen fingers continued their fiercely
staccato typing.

"Ah! That explains a lot!" Dundee conceded handsomely. "I just wondered,
amidst all this bonhommie of 'Bill' and 'Penny,' why I--"

"I only call Mr. Sanderson 'Bill' when I forget!" the small creature
defended herself sharply. "Goodness knows I _try_ to be an efficient
private secretary! And I could be a lot more efficient if lazy strangers
didn't plump themselves down in our best visitors' chair, and try to
flirt with me. I don't flirt! Do you hear?--_I don't flirt with
anybody!_"

"Flirt with you, you funny little Penny?" Dundee's voice was a little
sad, the voice of a man who finds himself grievously misunderstood. "I
only want you to like me, if you can, and be a little nice to me, for
after all I--"

"Oh, I know!" Penny Crain jerked the finished letter from her typewriter
and spun about on her narrow-backed swivel chair to face him. "I know
you are 'Mr. James F. Dundee, Special Investigator attached to the
office of the District Attorney,' and that you have a right to drive me
crazy if you want to."

"_Crazy?_" Dundee was genuinely amazed, contrite. "I beg your pardon
most humbly, Miss Crain. I'll go back to my cell--"

"Your office is almost as big and nice as this one," Penny retorted, but
her sharp, bright brown eyes--really almost the color of a new
penny--softened until they took on a velvety depth.

Dundee did not fail to notice the softening, nor did the little
heart-shaped face, with its low widow's-peak, its straight, short nose,
and its pointed little chin, made almost childish by the deep cleft
which cut through its obvious effort to look mature and determined, fail
to please him any more acutely than on the other days of the one short
week he had been privileged at intervals to gaze upon it.

"But the files, and--other things--are in this office," he told her, his
blue eyes twinkling happily once more.

"Don't you _dare_ touch my files again!" Penny cried, springing to her
feet and running toward the wall which was completely concealed by
drawers, cabinets and shelves, filled with the records of which she was
the proud custodian. "That's why I said just now that you were driving
me crazy. Thursday you took a whole folder of correspondence out of the
letter files and put it back under the wrong initial. I had to hunt