Page:Top-Notch Magazine, May 1 1915 (IA tn 1915 05 01).pdf/83

 America to work—the women of our family have stayed idly at home—did not get here until a short time ago."

"Coming from where?" asked the psychologist.

"I don't know," the young man answered simply. "I think she is an Austrian, for the Magyar dialect she speaks is the least likely of the languages she knows to have been learned by choice. I spoke of this to her once, and she did not contradict me." He paused to control his agitation, and then went on: "She had, so far as I know, no friends. So you see, Mr. Trant, that all that makes my father's consent to my marrying her only a greater proof of her evident goodness and charm!"

"Then he did consent to your marrying her?" Trant interjected.

"Yes; two weeks ago. I had begged and begged her, but she never had been willing to give me her promise. A week ago last Wednesday, after she had known for more than a week that father had agreed to it, she finally consented—but only conditionally. I was going away for a short business trip, and Eva told me that she wanted that much time to think it over, but that when I came back she would tell me all about herself and, if I still wanted to marry her after hearing it, she would marry me. I never imagined that any one could force her to change her mind!"

"Yet she did change her mind, you think?" put in Trant.

"Without question, Mr. Trant!" was the emphatic reply. "And it seems to have been wholly because of the visit of the 'hammering man,' who came to see her at the office the day after I left Chicago. It sounds queer to call him that, but I do not know his name, nor anything about him, except the fact of his hammering."

"But if the people in the office saw him, you have at least his description," said Trant.

"They say he was unusually large, gross, almost bestial in appearance, and red-headed. He was plainly dressed. He asked to see Eva. When she caught sight of him she turned back and refused to speak with him."

"How did the man take her refusal?" was the next question.

"He seemed very angry for a moment, and then went out into the public corridor," replied Edwards. "For a long time he walked back and forth in the corridor, muttering to himself. The people in the office had practically forgotten him when they were startled by a noise of hammering or pounding in the corridor. One wall of the inner office where Eva had her desk is formed by the wall of the corridor, and the man was beating upon it with his fists."

"Hammering excitedly?" asked Trant.

"No; in a rather deliberate and measured manner. My father, who heard the sound, says it was so very distinctive as to be recognizable if heard again."

"Odd!" said Trant. "And what effect did this have on Miss Silber?"

"That is the strangest part of it. Eva had seemed worried and troubled ever since she learned the man was there, but this hammering seemed to agitate and disturb her out of all reason. At the end of the day's business she went to my father and abruptly resigned the position of trust she held with us. My father, surprised and angry at her refusal to give a reason for this action, accepted her resignation."

"You do not happen to know whether, before this visit, Miss Silber had received any letter which troubled her," said Trant.

"She may have received a message at her house, but not at the office," admitted the young man. "However, there is something still more mysterious. On Sunday, my father, sorry that