A few minutes later Charity went out, too. She had watched to see in what direction he was going, and she took the opposite way and walked quickly down the main street to the brick building on the corner of Lake Avenue. There she paused to look cautiously up and down the thoroughfare, and then climbed the brass-bound stairs to Dr. Merkle's door. The same bushy-headed mulatto girl admitted her, and after the same interval of waiting in the red plush parlor she was once more summoned to Dr. Merkle's office. The doctor received her without surprise, and led her into the inner plush sanctuary.
“I thought you'd be back, but you've come a mite too soon: I told you to be patient and not fret,” she observed, after a pause of penetrating scrutiny.
Charity drew the money from her breast. “I've come to get my blue brooch,” she said, flushing.
“Your brooch?” Dr. Merkle appeared not to remember. “My, yes--I get so many things of that kind. Well, my dear, you'll have to wait while I get it out of the safe. I don't leave valuables like that laying round like the noospaper.”
She disappeared for a moment, and returned with a bit of twisted-up tissue paper from which she unwrapped the brooch.
Charity, as she looked at it, felt a stir of warmth at her heart. She held out an eager hand.
“Have you got the change?” she asked a little breathlessly, laying one of the twenty-dollar bills on the table.
“Change? What'd I want to have change for? I only see two twenties there,” Dr. Merkle answered brightly.
Charity paused, disconcerted. “I thought... you said it was five dollars a visit....”
“For YOU, as a favour--I did. But how about the responsibility and the insurance? I don't s'pose you ever thought of that? This pin's worth a hundred dollars easy. If it had got lost or stole, where'd I been when you come to claim it?”
Charity remained silent, puzzled and half-convinced by the argument, and Dr. Merkle promptly followed up her advantage. “I didn't ask you for your brooch, my dear. I'd a good deal ruther folks paid me my regular charge than have 'em put me to all this trouble.”
She paused, and Charity, seized with a desperate longing to escape, rose to her feet and held out one of the bills.
“No, I won't take that, my dear; but I'll take it with its mate, and hand you over a signed receipt if you don't trust me.”