Kindly call at your earliest convenience, and oblige,
Faithfully yours,
EMMA HARPE
Symes had spent a sleepless night and his mood was savage. Another
defiant interview before leaving the house had not improved it and now
this communication from Dr. Harpe came as a climax.
He swung in his office chair.
"'My earliest convenience!' If that isn't like her confounded
impudence--her colossal nerve! When she's stalking past here every
fifteen minutes all day long. 'My earliest convenience!' By gad!"--he
struck the desk in sudden determination--"I'm just in the mood to humor
her. Things have come to a pretty pass when Andy P. Symes can't say who
and who not shall be admitted to his home. If she wants to know what's
the matter with me, I'll tell her!"
He closed his desk with a slam and slung his broad-brimmed hat upon his
head. Dr. Harpe, glancing through her window, read purpose in his stride
as he came down the street. Her green eyes took on the gleam of battle
and to doubly fortify herself she wrenched open her desk drawer and
filled a whiskey glass to the brim. When she had drained it without
removing it from her lips she drew her shirtwaist sleeve across her
mouth to dry it, in a fashion peculiarly her own. Then she tilted her
desk chair at a comfortable angle and her crossed legs displayed a
stocking wrinkled in its usual mosquetaire effect. She was without her
jacket but wore a man's starched pique waistcoat over her white
shirtwaist, and from one pocket there dangled a man's watch-fob of
braided leather. She threw an arm over the chair-back and toyed with a
pencil on her desk, waiting in this studied pose of nonchalance the
arrival of Symes.
The occasion when he had last climbed the stairs of the Terriberry House
for the purpose of visiting Dr. Harp was unpleasantly vivid and the
secret they had in common nettled him for the first time. But secret or
no secret he was in no humor to temporize or conciliate and there were
only harsh thoughts of the woman in his mind.
"How are you, Mr. Symes?" She greeted him carelessly as he opened the
door, without altering her position.
"Good morning," he responded curtly. There was no trace of his usual
urbanity and he chewed nervously upon the end of an unlighted cigar.
"Sit down." She waved him casually to a chair, and there was that in her
impudent assurance which made him shut his teeth hard upon the mutilated
cigar.
"Thanks," he said stiffly, and did as she bid him.
"Light up," she urged, and fumbled in a pocket of her waistcoat for a
match which she handed him. "Guess I'll smoke myself. It helps me talk,
and that's what we're here for."
He had not known that she smoked, and as he watched her roll a cigarette
with the skill of much practice the action filled him with fresh
repugnance. Through rings of smoke he regarded her with coldly quizzical
eyes while he waited for her to open the conversation.
"I've got a proposition to put up to you," she began, "a scheme that I
had in the back of my head ever since you started in to 'make the desert
bloom like the rose.'"
Her covert sneer did not escape him, but he made no sign.