“Any idea where she was going?” questioned Carroll.

The answer came promptly:  it mentioned the city’s leading department store—­“she’s gone there to get a beauty treatment,” vouchsafed the maid.

Carroll was not a little chagrined.  Evelyn Rogers had put him in more hopeless positions in their brief acquaintanceship than he had experienced in years.  There was his call upon her the previous night with its role of dual entertainer to the young lady with a nineteen-year-old college freshman.  And now a vigil outside a beauty parlor.

But he went grimly to work.  He located the beauty parlor on the third floor of the giant store, and paced determinedly back and forth before its doors.

A half hour passed; an hour—­two hours.  He concluded that Evelyn must be purchasing her beauty in job lots.  When two hours and thirty-five minutes had elapsed Evelyn emerged—­and Carroll groaned.  With her were three other girls, as chattery, as immature, as Evelyn herself.

She swept down upon him in force—­tongue wagging at both ends—­

“You naughty, naughty man!” she chided.  “You abso_lute_ly deserted me last night.  Why, I didn’t even know that you had gone—­until Sis came in and said you had asked her to extend your respects.  Good gracious!  I almost died!”

“I’m sorry—­really,” returned Carroll humbly—­“But you seemed so interested in that young man—­and I had gotten into an absorbing conversation with your sister and brother-in-law.  I’m not used to girls, you know.”

“Kidder!  I think you’re simply elegant!” She turned to her giggling friends and introduced them gushingly.  Carroll was in misery—­a martyr to the cause.  But Evelyn would not let him get away.  Through her sudden friendship with the great detective, Evelyn was building up a reputation that was destined to survive for years, and she was not one to fail to make the most of her opportunities.

It was not until almost an hour later, when the other three girls had left for their homes—­left only after they had hung around until the ultimate moment before lunch—­that Carroll found himself alone with his little gold mine of data.  He bent his head hopefully—­

“Were you planning to eat lunch downtown?”

She nodded.  “Uh-huh!”

“Suppose we eat together?”

“Scrumptious!” There was no hint of hesitation in her manner.  “I’ve been hoping ever since we met that you’d ask me.”

They found a table mercifully secluded in the corner of the main dining room of the city’s leading hotel.  For once Carroll felt gratitude for the notoriously slow service.  He begged her to order—­and she did:  ordered a meal which contained T.N.T. possibilities for acute indigestion.  Carroll smiled and let her have her way—­he was amused at her valiant efforts to appear the blase society woman.

“I really did enjoy our conversation last night, Miss Rogers.”