“Yes.  It isn’t much.  But some day, maybe, I’ll be able to afford a swell apartment with—­”

“Sure you will,” Bull agreed, as they passed up the steps to the entrance doors.  “But meanwhile I mostly need your ’phone number of this,” he added with a laugh.

The baggage was left to the porter’s care, and they stood together in the hallway.  Bull’s youthful stature was overshadowing for all Nancy was tall.  Somehow the girl was glad of it.  She liked his height, and the breadth of his great shoulders, and the power of limbs his tweed suit was powerless to disguise.

She moved across to the porter’s office and wrote down her ’phone number while the man looked on.  But he only had eyes for the girl herself.  At that moment her telephone number was the last thing he desired to think about.

She stood up and offered him the paper.

“You won’t forget it that way,” she said, with a smile.

“No.”

Bull glanced down at it.  Then he looked again into the smiling eyes.

“Thanks,” he said.  “I’ll ring up.”  Then he held out a hand.  “So long.”

He was gone.  The glass door had swung to behind him.  Nancy watched him pass into the waiting automobile, and responded to his final wave of the hand.  Then she turned to the porter, and her smile had completely vanished.

* * * * *

Nathaniel Hellbeam stood up.  He had been seated at Elas Peterman’s desk studying the papers which his managing director had set out for his perusal.  His gross body hung over the table for a moment as he reached towards his hat.  He took his gloves from inside it and commenced to put them on.

“The Myra?  You say she is in?” he asked in his guttural fashion.  “This girl?  This girl who is to buy up this—­this Sachigo man,” he laughed.  “Is she arrived?”

The man’s eyes were alight with unpleasant derision.  Peterman gave no heed.  The man’s arrogance was all too familiar to him.

“I’ve not heard—­yet,” he said.  “She should be.”

“You not have heard—­yet?” The challenge was superlatively offensive.  “You a beautiful secretary have.  You lose her for weeks—­months.  Yet you do not know of her return—­yet?  Sho!  You are not the man for this beautiful secretary.  She for me is—­yes?  Hah!”

Peterman smiled as was his duty.

“I shall be glad to get her back,” he said quietly.  “But I haven’t heard from her at all.  And—­well, she’s not the sort of woman to bombard with telegrams.  She’s out on a difficult job and I felt it best to leave her to it.  I shall hear when she’s ready, I guess she’ll be right along in to tell me personally.  Maybe—­”

He broke off and picked up the telephone whose buzzer was rattling impatiently on the desk.