Jennie Baxter, Journalist, page 89 by Robert Barr
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used, her absence might possibly serve to confirm them. Exactly at four o'clock next afternoon she entered his office and found him, to her relief, alone. He sprang up from his table on seeing her, and said in a whisper, "I am so glad you have come. I am in rather a quandary. Lord Donal Starling is in London on a flying visit. He called here yesterday."
The girl caught her breath, but said nothing.
"I explained to him the reasons I have for believing that it was actually the Princess von Steinheimer whom he met at the Duchess of Chiselhurst's ball. He laughed at me; there was no convincing him. He said that theory was more absurd than the sending him a picture of a housemaid as that of the lady he met at the ball. I used an the arguments which you had used, but he brushed them aside as of no consequence, and somehow the case did not appear to be as clear as when you propounded your theory."
"Well, what then?" asked the girl.
"Why, then I asked him to come up here at four o'clock and hear what an assistant of mine would say about the case."
"At four o'clock!" cried the girl in terror; "then he may be here at any moment."
"He is here now; he is in the next room. Come in, and I will introduce you, and then I want you to tell him all the circumstances which lead you to believe that it was the Princess herself whom he met. I am sure you can place all the points before him so tersely that you will succeed in bringing him round to your own way of thinking. You will try, won't you, Miss Baxter? It will be a very great obligement to me."
"Oh, no, no, no!" cried the girl; "I am not going to admit to anyone that I have been acting as a detective's assistant. You had no right to bring me here. I must go at once. If I had known this I would not have come."
"It won't take you five minutes," pleaded Cadbury Taylor. "He is at this moment waiting for you; I told him you would be here at four."
"I can't help that; you had no right to make an appointment for me