Suspense

"Young woman, well-bred, educated, stranger in city, and without relatives, desires situation as companion or social secretary with lady of established reputation and position. Good oral reader, pianist, quick and accurate household accountant, intelligent amanuensis, willing and obliging. Amount of salary optional. Address Miss Betty Shaw, 160 Wakefield Avenue."

The girl read the advertisement for the twentieth time, then dropped the newspaper upon the shabbily ornate center table with a shrug of impatience, a frown gathering between her level brows.

The boarding house parlor was shrouded in gloom, and outside the window whirling snowflakes showed white against the deepening dusk. A little heap of torn envelopes and a card or two upon the mantel bore evidence that the naïve appeal had evoked response, yet it was with a hopeless gesture that the girl turned from them and began pacing the floor, her brooding eyes fixed as though they would pierce the shadows which crept about her.

All at once she paused tense and alert with lifted chin and quickened breath. The throbbing purr of a motor had pulsed upon the stillness of the snow-enwrapped street, and halted with a dull grinding of brakes before the door.

She darted to the window and peered eagerly out between the dingy curtains. A massive limousine stood at the curb, its bulk looming blackly against the lesser darkness, with broad diagonal lines of white striping the lower body, and a rakish torpedo-shaped hood. It was just such a car as a person of somewhat bizarre taste and the wealth with which to gratify it might have chosen, yet had it been a veritable juggernaut its effect upon the girl could have been no more sinister. She recoiled from the window, her hands clenched, her breast heaving tumultuously, and shadowed as it was, her face seemed distorted into a mere mask of malevolent fury akin to triumph.

Then the small hands relaxed, and with a visible effort at control, she turned toward the door, as laggard feet shuffled along the passageway and a murmur of voices arose.

"'Nother lady to see you, Miss." A frowsy head appeared in the doorway and the girl advanced to meet the summons.

"Ask her to come in, please, Susan." Her voice was guilelessly soft and low. "No, wait, I must light the gas--"

But the servant had already disappeared and in her place stood a tall, commanding figure, swathed in furs and heavily veiled. For a moment the girl hesitated, then with a steady hand she struck a match and a flare of light streamed from the gas jet. In the full flow of its radiance, she turned and faced her visitor.

The woman in the doorway took a step forward and paused involuntarily, with a slight murmur of shocked surprise. The girl before her was slender and of quite a usual type, with soft brown hair and moderately large blue eyes, but a spreading blood-red scar with five curved streaks reaching out from it like an angry clutching hand covered her left cheek from brow to neck.

If the girl observed the other's momentary loss of poise she gave no sign. Her level brows were arched ingenuously, her expression childlike in its bland candor, but the smile which parted her lips did not reach her shadowed, inscrutable eyes.

"Won't you take this chair? You wished to see me regarding my advertisement for a position?"