Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/107

Rh and carefully counted out six one-hundred-dollar bank-notes.

I looked at them hard, for it's seldom in this life that money, real money, comes to you as at that moment it seemed to be coming to me. I knew enough of the life of the wild to know that it seldom dealt in such things. The timber-wolves of the underworld were always ready enough to pass out promises; they were always ready to slip the gilded brick into your unsuspecting mitt. They were always long on pretensions and promises, but always short on performances. Yet here was a little old scoundrel of the first water actually flagging me with real money. He was flaunting it openly in my face. And that was enough to ballyhoo aloud to the world that the case was a most exceptional one.

"Six hundred dollars," the little old codger repeated, as solemn as an owl, as he handed the six bank-notes over to me.

I took them without a smile. Then I counted them and still again made sure they weren't stage-money, and then backed discreetly away. I did this for the purpose of stowing that windfall deep down in my stocking top.

The little old rat, while I was doing this, stared pointedly up at the ceiling, with his clustered finger-