“Music is a grand profession,” he said, “if you can give your time to it. But the stage is damnable! Never go on the stage, young lady. Keep you on the right side of the footlights. Those stage people are queer, insincere folk.” He nodded emphatically and went on: “I used to sit down in the deep orchestra well and watch her little toes twisting. She was a bonny girl. Not much older than you, and haughty, like stage folks are. And how I got up my courage to ask her to wed me I never understood.” He sighed heavily. “Ah, well! I’d rather live in a fool’s paradise than no paradise at all, and for two years----” He shook his head. “She was a bonny girl, but she had the criminal mind. Some lassies are like that. They’ve just no conscience and no remorse. And if you’ve no conscience and no remorse and no sense of values, why, there’s nothing you wouldn’t do from murder downwards.” It was not the first time Lois had heard these rambling and disjointed references to a mysterious woman, these admonitions to avoid the stage, but it was the first time that he had made a reference to the criminal mind. “Women are funny creatures, Mr. Mackenzie,” she said, humouring him. He nodded. “Aye, they are,” he said simply. “But, generally speaking, they’re superior to most men. I thank ye for the tea, Miss Reddle.” She went upstairs to find Lizzy struggling into her coat. “Well, did he warn you off the boards?” asked Miss Smith, as she strolled to the little mirror and dabbed her nose untidily with powder. “I’ll bet he did! I told him yesterday that I was going into a beauty chorus, and he nearly had a fit.” “You shouldn’t tease the poor old man,” said Lois. “He ought to have more sense,” said Lizzy scornfully. “Beauty chorus! Hasn’t he got eyes?” Chapter Two They went off to the office together, walking through the Bloomsbury squares, and only once did Lois look round apprehensively for her unwelcome cavalier. Happily he was not in sight. “About that scar on your arm,” said Lizzy, when they were crossing Theobalds Road. “I know a perfectly posh place in South Moulton Street where they take away scars. I thought of going there to have a face treatment. The managing clerk suggested it--Lois, that fellow is getting so fresh he ought to be kept on ice. And him forty-eight with a grown-up family!” Two hours later, Mr. Oliver Shaddles picked up some documents from the table, read through with quick and skilful eyes, rubbed the grey stubble on his unshaven chin irritably, and glared out upon Bedford Row. He turned towards the little bell-push on his table, hesitated a second, then pressed it. “Miss Reddle!” he snapped to the clerk who answered his summons with haste. Again he examined the sheet of foolscap, and was still reading when the door opened and Lois Reddle came in.