“Oh, then, it’s with women only I have to deal?”

“Read the address after you are headed up Fifth Avenue.”

But when, with her doubts not yet entirely removed, she opened the small slip he had given her, the number inside suggested nothing but the fact that her destination lay somewhere near Eightieth Street.  It was therefore with the keenest surprise she beheld her motor stop before the conspicuous house of the great financier whose late death had so affected the money-market.  She had not had any acquaintance with this man herself, but she knew his house.  Everyone knew that.  It was one of the most princely in the whole city.  C. Dudley Brooks had known how to spend his millions.  Indeed, he had known how to do this so well that it was of him her father, also a financier of some note, had once said he was the only successful American he envied.

She was expected; that she saw the instant the door was opened.  This made her entrance easy—­an entrance further brightened by the delightful glimpse of a child’s cherubic face looking at her from a distant doorway.  It was an instantaneous vision, gone as soon as seen; but its effect was to rob the pillared spaces of the wonderful hallway of some of their chill, and to modify in some slight degree the formality of a service which demanded three men to usher her into a small reception-room not twenty feet from the door of entrance.

Left in this secluded spot, she had time to ask herself what member of the household she would be called upon to meet, and was surprised to find that she did not even know of whom the household consisted.  She was sure of the fact that Mr. Brooks had been a widower for many years before his death, but beyond that she knew nothing of his domestic life.  His son—­but was there a son?  She had never heard any mention made of a younger Mr. Brooks, yet there was certainly some one of his connection who enjoyed the rights of an heir.  Him she must be prepared to meet with a due composure, whatever astonishment he might show at the sight of a slip of a girl instead of the experienced detective he had every right to expect.

But when the door opened to admit the person she was awaiting, the surprise was hers.  It was a woman who stood before her, a woman and an oddity.  Yet, in just what her oddity lay, Violet found it difficult to decide.  Was it in the smoothness of her white locks drawn carefully down over her ears, or in the contrast afforded by her eager eyes and her weak and tremulous mouth?  She was dressed in the heaviest of mourning and very expensively, but there was that in her bearing and expression which made it impossible to believe that she took any interest in her garments or even knew in which of her dresses she had been attired.

“I am the person you have come here to see,” she said.  “Your name is not unfamiliar to me, but you may not know mine.  It is Quintard; Mrs. Quintard.  I am in difficulty.  I need assistance—­ secret assistance.  I did not know where to go for it except to a detective agency; so I telephoned to the first one I saw advertised; and—­and I was told to expect Miss Strange.  But I didn’t think it would be you though I suppose it’s all right.  You have come here for this purpose, haven’t you, though it does seem a little queer?”