I felt vaguely disappointed that my strategy had not worked. I had given the name of Anderson, and had represented myself as the head of the Steamfitters' Union of Cleveland, anxious for instructions on how to settle a labor problem in our local union. I had done this, feeling that if I gave my own name, he might refuse to see me. Apparently my alias was to have no better success. "When will he be free, can you tell me?" "I couldn't say," the girl answered. "He is very busy at present, but if you will come in and wait, perhaps he may see you later." It seemed to me there was the faintest suggestion of a smile on the girl's face as I stepped across the threshold into the small waiting-room, but I hadn't a chance to observe more closely, for she turned her back on me at once and immediately resumed her typewriting. The room in which I found myself was one of a dingy suite in an old warehouse that had been converted into a newspaper building to house _The Uplift_, a weekly paper, edited by a Russian Jew named Borsky and financed by Schreiber. It was a typical anarchistic sheet, and had been suppressed for a time, during the war. Opposite where I sat was a door from which the paint had peeled in places. This evidently led into Zalnitch's office, for I could hear the murmur of voices behind it. The rooms were ill-lighted and unclean, and it made me mad to see as nice a girl as the stenographer working herself to death in such dingy surroundings and for such a man as Zalnitch. I watched her as she worked and marveled that any one could make her fingers go so rapidly. I noticed with admiration and dissatisfaction, that unlike my stenographers, she didn't have to stop to erase a misspelled word every two minutes. I wondered what salary Zalnitch paid her and if she would like to change employers. "I hope you will pardon my interrupting your work--" I began. "You're not," the girl responded, without even glancing up. "May I ask if you are entirely satisfied with your employment here?" "Why do you ask?" she inquired, stopping for a moment and fixing me with clear gray eyes. "I am badly in need of a competent stenographer and I thought you might prefer working in a place where the surroundings are pleasanter and the pay probably higher." She studied me a moment, as though card-indexing me, then having apparently decided that I was in earnest and not merely trying to flirt, that elusive smile again played about her mouth. "You are the first steamfitter I ever met that found himself badly in need of a stenographer." Caught! I bit my lip at my stupid blunder, but had to laugh in spite of myself. "Your make-up is all wrong, Mr. Anderson--if your name is Anderson. I don't know what you are trying to do, nor why you picked out steamfitting as your mythical life-work, but I do know you aren't a detective."