She had turned away, giving him only a side glance, as he came out.  “I don’t know what’s on, something big.  The chief’s going to give you your big chance—­with me.”

Ronicky Doone grunted.

“Don’t do that,” exclaimed the girl impatiently.  “I know you think Pete is the top of the world, but that doesn’t mean that you can make a good imitation of him.  Don’t do it, Harry.  You’ll pass by yourself.  You don’t need a make-up, and not Pete’s on a bet.”

They reached the head of the stairs, and Ronicky Doone paused.  To go down was to face the mysterious chief whom he had no doubt was the old man to whom Harry Morgan had already referred.  In the meantime the conviction grew that this was indeed Caroline Smith.  Her free-and-easy way of talk was exactly that of a girl who might become interested in a man whom she had never seen, merely by letters.

“I want to talk to you,” said Ronicky, muffling his voice.  “I want to talk to you alone.”

“To me?” asked the girl, turning toward him.  The light from the hall lamp below gave Ronicky the faintest hint of her profile.

“Yes.”

“But the chief?”

“He can wait.”

She hesitated, apparently drawn by curiosity in one direction, but stopped by another thought.  “I suppose he can wait, but, if he gets stirred up about it—­oh, we’ll, I’ll talk to you—­but nothing foolish, Harry.  Promise me that?”

“Yes.”

“Slip into my room for a minute.”  She led the way a few steps down the hall, and he followed her through the door, working his mind frantically in an effort to find words with which to open his speech before she should see that he was not Harry Morgan and cry out to alarm the house.  What should he say?  Something about Bill Gregg at once, of course.  That was the thing.

The electric light snapped on at the far side of the room.  He saw a dressing table, an Empire bed covered with green-figured silk, a pleasant rug on the floor, and, just as he had gathered an impression of delightful femininity from these furnishings, the girl turned from the lamp on the dressing table, and he saw—­not Caroline Smith, but a bronze-haired beauty, as different from Bill Gregg’s lady as day is from night.

Chapter Eleven

A Cross-Examination

He was conscious then only of green-blue eyes, very wide, very bright, and lips that parted on a word and froze there in silence.  The heart of Ronicky Doone leaped with joy; he had passed the crisis in safety.  She had not cried out.

“You’re not—­” he had said in the first moment.

“I am not who?” asked the girl with amazing steadiness.  But he saw her hand go back to the dressing table and open, with incredible deftness and speed, the little top drawer behind her.

“Don’t do that!” said Ronicky softly, but sharply.  “Keep your hand off that table, lady, if you don’t mind.”