Arthur Stringer

“ It was the sort of a room any girl would love to lie in bed and study. But I had other things to do, I remembered, besides wriggling my toes over a nest which had been feathered for some other and some much luckier woman. I was only an intruder there, a usurper whose kingdom of grandeur might turn topsy-turvy at the first touch of a bell or the unannounced opening of a door. ”

“ And the look in Bud Griswold's eyes still frightened me.
"Bud, don't shoot!" I gasped out, as Wendy Washburn rose to his feet and stood with his back against the table. Even then, for all the blind ferocity on his face, I felt sorry for Bud. There seemed something so unreasoning and animal-like about that face. It was childish. It was pathetic. And stronger even than the terror that was tingling through my body was the sudden surge of pity for this man who had always misunderstood life as the living had misunderstood him. ”

“ And before Big Ben Locke could get his breath or sink back in his swivel chair I stepped through that door and slammed it after me, slammed it so hard that the glass rattled in the frame and little Dugmore, in the outer office, stared at me with eyes as round as saucers.
I didn't even wait to take the elevator. I walked down. And when I landed on Broadway I felt as though I'd fallen from a Turkish-bath steam-room. I scarcely knew which way I headed. But I kept on walking, for there was a fever in my blood that made me see double. ”

“ I didn't even care. I was too tired to worry over it. But weary as I was, I was at least wide enough awake to know that I stood face to face with a new mystery.
For in the bed of the cream and gold room of that empty house there was a young woman lying, fast asleep.
And remembering that, I not only locked my door and wheeled a dressing-table across it, but I also laid out Wendy Washburn's pearl-handled Colt, on what looked like a Louis-Seize vitrine of hand-painted glass standing close beside the bed. For I intended to sleep, even though I had to shoot a dozen mysterious females to do it! ”

“ I'd have to sit back and see Copperhead Kate dragging out her heart-to-heart talk with my Bud, and even then I was in some wordless way afraid of her, I hated that touch of stealth about her movements, that air of lazy self-concernment, that pose of gliding indifference to all the world about her. Bud told me that she was an uncommonly clever woman, as much cleverer than Third-Arm Annie, for instance, as Annie herself was cleverer than the every-day shop-lifter. ”

“ Bent over the wheel, close beside me, I could make out a clear-eyed and firm-lipped young woman. And my second blink at her convinced me of the fact that it was Clarissa Bartlett herself.
That made me sit up. It was not so easy as it sounds, for my head seemed to be the size of a Zeppelin and I could feel a distinct sense of burning under the sticky surface of the raw beefsteak.
The next thing that came to my attention was the fact that the girl driving the car wore a very familiar-looking coat of Hudson seal. The memory of where it had come from brought the past suddenly back to me. ”

“ It was old Ezra Bartlett who spoke first.
"You'd best beware of that young woman," he proclaimed in a venomous yet guarded whisper.
"Did you happen to be addressing me?" I inquired, attempting to fix him with a cold and haughty stare. But it's no easy thing to be cold and haughty when you've only got one eye.
"I tell you that woman's an impostor," hissed out the old man, anxiously watching the open door.
"And what do you two old blisters regard yourself as?" I coldly inquired.
"What does she say?" demanded old Brother Enoch, with one hand cupped behind his ear. ”

“ I think we must have had the city pretty much to ourselves during the midnight drive through one deserted street after another, for, by the way we skidded about corners and pounded over car-tracks, I knew we were traveling a little faster than the law allows. But my bag of sensation had been shaken out. I no longer reacted to what was taking place around me. I don't think an eighteen-inch gun could have startled me. Yet I remember my Hero-Man looking back over his shoulder and then calling out for our driver to go faster. ”

“ I prided myself on knowing the world, and its shams. But no woman, I've concluded, can be sure of any man's character until she's seen and studied him for half a lifetime, and then, like the poor old philosopher in Pisgah Sights, the light of wisdom dawns on her only when they start lettering her tombstone.
"I'm trying to make you understand," explained Big Ben, in his grim and ponderous meekness. ”

“ It gave me a start to see that it was the same weasel- faced little old man who had watched me in the elevator of the Asteroid Theater Building.
I recognized the rusty black. Then I remembered the narrow-set eyes and the pinched old face and the air of shabby and shuffling gentility. Yet, transparent as were his movements as a tailer, there was a note of determination in those same movements, a rat-like furtiveness which made him almost funny. But if Big Ben and his office were sending out that sort of operative to shadow my steps, I decided, they might as well announce it in a sky-sign. ”

“ It was a woman's voice, and the owner of that voice stepped in through the inner door opposite the hall at the same moment that I swung about and stared at her. It wasn't the revolver in this interloper's hand that made me gape at her with such stupid and empty eyes. It was the discovery that the woman was Copperhead Kate herself.
"Stop her!" was my foolish and frantic cry to Wendy Washburn as that woman with the snaky green eyes and the revolver in her hand strode insolently across the room to the other door. ”

“ And as I thought of her and her Michael I couldn't keep a wave of pity for poor Wendy Washburn from sweeping through me.
"And Mike—I mean Michael," I said, perhaps with malice aforethought, "how does he feel about it?"
"If he loves me:, it's only for me, myself. It's for my own sake. It's not for what I may have!"
That, I remembered, didn't altogether sound like Pinky McClone. Pinky, plainly, was playing for big stakes, and the worldly-wise Wendy Washburn, it was plain, was not altogether ignorant of that fact. ”

“ I knew that some one had opened the door, had silently entered the room, and was advancing across the floor.
Wendy Washburn was speaking again, but I had no idea what he was saying. His words became a meaningless jumble of sound, and I lost all thought of him, as that advancing shadow moved more directly into my line of vision.
My first shock came, as I slowly raised my eyes, when I discovered the intruder was not a woman. My second shock came when I realized that this intruder carried a blue-barreled automatic in his right hand. ”

“ There was not a sign of life in all that house-front.
But the little old ferret whipped out a pass-key and ushered me in through a narrow oak door with heavy scrolled hinges. He touched a button and a light showed. Then he turned and relocked the door, this time by sliding a Ruskin bronze bolt. But Still not a sign of life showed in that house. And I was beginning to get a chill from my Achilles tendon up. I suddenly remembered that I was ignorant of both the street and the number of the house that I had entered. But I decided to sit tight, and see the game out, whatever it might prove to be. ”

“ I still had Copperhead Kate's automatic in the slack of her over-abundant waist. Never in all my life had I shot off a pistol and I doubt if I could have pulled a trigger without shutting my eyes, yet I felt decidedly better when I held that black-metaled fire-arm once more in my hand. For the house, as I stepped into it, was as dark as pitch, and I had no idea of what the opening of the first door might confront me with. ”

“ And the mystery of Pinky McClone's presence in that house brought me sitting straight up between my crested sheets.
"Where's Claire?" he repeated, in a voice which was clearly a Celtic challenge to any one who cared openly to deny him that information.
"Who are you?" piped out old Enoch Bartlett, in a voice shrill with resentment.
Pinky squared about on him. And I must admit that he looked magnificent, that youthful ex-river pirate with the fire of Irish anger in his sky-blue eye. But it was Doctor Klinger who next advanced to the charge. ”