n the middle of the room, holding a loaded tray above his
head. In his abstraction he allowed the tray to tip, and the dishes
rained down over Crowley, who was seated directly under the edge of the
tray.

Latisan strode in and took his seat at the small table with the city
stranger while Brophy was mopping the guest off; the city chap had
received his food on his head and in his lap.

The waitress came and stood demurely at one side, meeting the flaming
gaze of the Vose-Mern man with a look that eloquently expressed her
emotions. "Shall I repeat the order?"

"Don't be fresh!" snarled Crowley.

Latisan rapped his knuckles on the table warningly. "Be careful how you
talk to this lady!"

"What have you got to say about it?" The stout chap started to rise.

But Latisan was up first. He leaned over and set his big hand, fingers
outspread like stiff prongs, upon the man's head, and twisted the caput
to and fro; then he drove the operative down with a thump in his chair.
"This is what I've got to say! Remember that she is a lady, and treat
her accordingly, or I'll twist off your head and take it downstreet and
sell it to the bowling-alley man."

It was plain that the girl was finding a piquant relish in the affair.

From the moment when she came down the stairs and took the white apron
which Brophy handed to her she had ceased to be the city-wearied girl.
It was homely adventure, to be sure, but the very plainness of it, in
the free-and-easy environment of the north woods, appealed to her sense
of novelty. There was especial zest for her in this bullyragging of
Crowley by the man who was to be victim of the machinations by the
Vose-Mern agency. Her eyes revealed her thoughts. The city man opened
his mouth. He promptly shut it and turned sideways in his chair, his
back to Latisan. Detective Crowley was enmeshed in a mystery which he
could not solve just then. What was the confidential secretary doing up
there?

The girl smiled down on her champion--an expansive, charming, warming
smile. "I thank you! What will you have?"

She surveyed his face with concern; his countenance was working with
emotion. In her new interest, she noted more particularly than in the
New York cafeteria, that he apparently was, in spite of what Craig had
said, a big, wholesome, naive chap who confessed to her by his eyes,
then and there, that he was honestly and respectfully surrendering his
heart to her, short though the acquaintance had bee