Mary, Eddie and Joe have all moved to New York from the quiet Canadian town of Dunsterville. Mary, the last to relocate, gets a job as a stenographer with Joe.
While Eddie seems to be the same man that Mary knew back home, Joe acts cold and distant, not at all the fellow he was. But appearances can be deceptive.
| Mary Hill | a stenographer |
| Joe Rendal | her employer, a financier |
| Eddie Moore | a friend |
| a policeman |
First published August 1911 in the Strand magazine.
Also published August 1912 in Pictorial Review (US).
Stenographer
- someone who takes shorthand (the term is still used in the US but not the UK).
Pearl Street
- a street in south Manhattan. It has several kinks unlike the vast majority of the roads in the area, i.e. it's crooked.
City Hall Park
- in south Manhattan, near Broadway.
Three-card-trick
- a confidence trick in which the victim is asked to pick a particular card from three face down after mixing. Initially they might win, then they always lose. (Also known as 'Find the Lady'.)
Thersites
- in Homer, a soldier who called Agamemnon greedy and Achilles a coward. Shakespeare used the name for a character in Troilus and Cressida whom he described (in Act 1, Scene 3) as:
'Twenty million young women rose to their feet with the cry "We will not be dictated to," and promptly became stenographers.' - G. K. Chesterton.