Excerpt: The Inventor and the precog

The stranger was wringing his gloves with renewed intensity. He paced up and down in front of the window, always looking westward on the street as though expecting to find something. He decided to take a different approach.
“Young man,” Maxwell said and opened the door to his office. “Why don’t we just step in here and have a sit down.” But the stranger looked nervously out the window again. He seemed unwilling to leave it. “Alright, we’ll stay out here.” Maxwell settled himself behind the vacant secretary’s desk. “Please, have a seat.”
Again, the stranger remained by the window and shot nervous glance at the street. The he placed his hands behind his back and bowed again. “I’d rather stand if it is all the same.”
Maxwell shrugged. “Now, tell me what seems to be the problem.”
The stranger lifted a top hat Maxwell had not even noticed was there and began spinning it in his hands. “It’s my… there’s a girl…”
Maxwell confessed himself shocked. Of all the things he had expected to hear, this was not one of them.
“I see…”
But the stranger shook his head again. “You don’t understand,” he said shortly. “She needs my help. I need to know the legal ramifications.”
“Of?”
“Of removing her from her current home,” the stranger replied. He stilled his hands and replaced the top hat on the counter. Then he turned to the window again. He was quite still now, as though saying these words had some how banished his anxiety.