Legend Of The Highland Dragon

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“I need to see Carter.”

The voice was deep, with a pronounced Scottish accent and a distinct sense of urgency. The owner was already speaking before the door to Professor Richard Carter’s outer office had closed. The words were all too familiar to Mina by now.

“Professor Carter isn’t in at the moment,” Mina replied without lifting her gaze from the typewriter.

She spoke firmly, with emphasis on the Professor, careful to round off her vowels and clip her consonants and to leave time between each of the words. All of that had taken considerable effort when she’d first taken her position. Now, two years of constant practice—especially with that line—made her speech almost unconscious, like the motion of her fingers over the typewriter keys.

The next line was “If you’d care to leave your card, I can give it to him,” but as she finally looked up, the visitor’s appearance made Mina pause.

He stood in the doorway like a knight out of some storybook illustration, or perhaps an American outlaw from a penny dreadful: someone ready to do battle, at least, and not necessarily someone on the side of the angels. He was tall and dark, broad-shouldered and square-chinned. His clothes were well-tailored and the fabric looked like it was of good quality, but the respectable dark suit looked somehow incongruous on him, as if he were wearing a very expensive costume.

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