He smiled suddenly--a boyish, not unattractive smile, "I've tried my best to get in to see Miss Lathrup, but they keep telling me she's out for lunch, or in conference or taken the afternoon off or gone away for the week-end. I suppose if I'd been very persistent and made a nuisance of myself she might have consented to see me for a minute or two. But what good would that have done me? What good, really? I could never have persuaded her to spend a half hour looking at my drawings--or even fifteen or twenty minutes. It would have been better than not seeing her at all, but I wasn't counting on it to do me much good." The smile widened a little. "So I suddenly asked myself--why not? Why not wait until you were through for the day and introduce myself and have a talk with someone with just a little more time, and trust to luck that you wouldn't be offended and that if I showed you some of my work and you liked it you might become interested enough to give me a chance to do at least one illustration on speculation." Lynn Prentiss sat rigid, her mouth dry, staring at him with such an appalled look in her eyes that he suddenly fell silent, his boyish grin vanishing. She could not yet fully grasp what he said, could only wait, shocked, paralyzed, for something to happen that would widen her understanding quickly enough for all of the terror to be dispelled. For an awful moment the youth who sat facing her remained what he had been--a sinister and dangerous killer who had no intention of permitting her to leave the restaurant alive. The gun.... She saw his right hand then, the hand she'd imagined firmly clasping a gun, one finger on the trigger ... the gun that would explode in his pocket with a terrible roar, ripping the cloth to shreds and killing her. He'd removed the hand from his pocket and it was resting on the table now, the stubby fingers still contracted into a fist. A fist ... nothing more! A fist which had been thrust deeply into the coat pocket of a boy keyed up, embarrassed, uncertain of himself--a hard-knuckled fist making, quite naturally, a weapon-like bulge. She had a sudden, almost uncontrollable impulse to laugh hysterically, to let herself go, not caring what anyone in the restaurant might think, least of all this crazy kid with his sheaf of drawings. It was a portfolio he'd been carrying, she could see that now. The square, black object was a portfolio and it rested on the table; there was nothing but drawings in it, good, bad or indifferent. She had been given back her life and had nothing at all to fear. "I guess ... I took too much for granted," he stammered. A deep flush had crept up over his cheekbones and he seemed almost on the verge of tears. "You do crazy things at times when you feel that you really can draw, and that just a brief talk with an editor in a position to recommend--"