was Mern's unvarying custom to have Miss Kennard in
to listen to and take down all that a client had to state. She was
extremely shocked in the first stages of her association with the
Vose-Mern agency by the nature of the commissions undertaken. But it was
the best position she had secured, after climbing the ladder through the
offices of more or less impecunious attorneys. She needed the good pay
because her mother was an invalid; she continued to need the pay after
her mother died. There were bills to be settled. She had grown used to
setting the installments on those bills ahead of new hats, and the cameo
ring which had been her mother's keepsake was for the sake of memory,
not adornment.

By dint of usage, the Vose-Mern business had come to seem to her like a
real business. Certainly some big men came and solicited Mern's aid and
appeared to think that his methods were proper. In course of time,
listening to Mern's ethics, she came to accept matters at their
practical value and ceased to analyze them for the sake of seeking for
nice balances of right and wrong. She was in and of the Vose-Mern
organization! She sat in on conferences, wrote down placidly plots for
doing up men who had not had the foresight to hire Mern--Vose had been
merely an old detective, and he was dead--and she sometimes entertained
a vague ambition to be an operative herself. She liked pretty hats and
handsome rings--though she was scornfully averse to the Leigh-Javotte
system as she was acquainted with it by the chance remarks the
associates dropped. As to operatives--Miss Kennard had heard--well, she
had heard Miss Elsham, for instance, a crack operative, reveal what the
rewards of the regular work were; and, the way Miss Elsham looked at it,
a girl did not have to lower her self-respect.

In the midst of these thoughts, getting a side glance at the new hat
which Miss Leigh was showing to Miss Javotte, Miss Kennard was called to
conference; the buzzer summoned her.

Mern introduced her to the client of the day; the chief made that his
custom; it always seemed to put the client more at his ease because an
introduction made her an important member of the party--and Mern
stressed the "confidential secretary" thing.

The client was Director Craig of the Comas company.

He rose with a haste which betrayed a natural susceptibility to the
charms of pretty women. He cooed at her rather than spoke, altering his
natural tone, smoothing out all th