“Hallo, Jefferson, boy!  You want to see me.  Can you wait till I’m through?  I’ve got a lady here.  Going away?  Nonsense!  Determined, eh?  Well, I can’t keep you here if you’ve made up your mind.  You want to say good-bye.  Come up in about five minutes and I’ll introduce you to a very interesting person.”  He laughed and hung up the receiver.  Shirley was all unstrung, trying to overcome the emotion which her discovery had caused her, and in a strangely altered voice, the result of the nervous strain she was under, she said: 

“You want me to come here?”

She looked up from the letters she was reading across to Ryder, who was standing watching her on the other side of the desk.  He caught her glance and, leaning over to take some manuscript, he said: 

“Yes, I don’t want these papers to get—­”

His eye suddenly rested on the letters she was holding.  He stopped short, and reaching forward he tried to snatch them from her.

“What have you got there?” he exclaimed.

He took the letters and she made no resistance.  It would be folly to force the issue now, she thought.  Another opportunity would present itself.  Ryder locked the letters up very carefully in the drawer on the left-hand side of his desk, muttering to himself rather than speaking to Shirley: 

“How on earth did they get among my other papers?”

“From Judge Rossmore, were they not?” said Shirley boldly.

“How did you know it was Judge Rossmore?” demanded Ryder suspiciously.  “I didn’t know that his name had been mentioned.”

“I saw his signature,” she said simply.  Then she added:  “He’s the father of the girl you don’t like, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he’s the——­”

A cloud came over the financier’s face; his eyes darkened, his jaws snapped and he clenched his fist.

“How you must hate him!” said Shirley, who observed the change.

“Not at all,” replied Ryder recovering his self-possession and suavity of manner.  “I disagree with his politics and his methods, but—­I know very little about him except that he is about to be removed from office.”

“About to be?” echoed Shirley.  “So his fate is decided even before he is tried?” The girl laughed bitterly.”  Yes,” she went on, “some of the newspapers are beginning to think he is innocent of the things of which he is accused.”

“Do they?” said Ryder indifferently.

“Yes,” she persisted, “most people are on his side.”

She planted her elbows on the desk in front of her, and looking him squarely in the face, she asked him point blank: 

“Whose side are you on—­really and truly?”

Ryder winced.  What right had this woman, a stranger both to Judge Rossmore and himself, to come here and catechise him?  He restrained his impatience with difficulty as he replied: 

“Whose side am I on?  Oh, I don’t know that I am on any side.  I don’t know that I give it much thought.  I—­”