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Duff did not take the case seriously at first. It did not come to him through the proper door. One of his office staff, a Mrs. Cooley, brought it to him on behalf of a friend of hers. He listened to her as a doctor might listen to one of his nurses reporting a friend’s symptoms.
“Bring her in,” he said cheerfully, “and let’s look her over. She may be dreaming.”
But when Mrs. Cooley went back to the filing room and produced not only her friend Mollie Simpson—who was a stenographer—but Mollie Simpson’s employer, who was Mary Bryant, Duff took a look at Mary Bryant and stood up at his desk to meet her, interested.
She was obviously no dreamer. She was a large and matronly young woman, quietly dressed in a mode of expensive simplicity; she entered Duff’s office with an air of being the
