Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/116

104 voice that had spoken last. I knew It was the little old man who had followed me through the city.

"Nobody but the nurse—I'm positive of that," was the doctor's answer.

Again there was a silence.

"If Brother Ezra will take a suggestion from me," began one of the piping-voiced old conspirators. But Brother Ezra shut him off short.

"Please do not croak at me, Enoch, when I'm trying to think." And I could hear him abstractedly and meditatively repeat that final phrase: "Trying to think—trying to think."

"But we haven't got time for thinking," broke in the fat doctor. I could hear the quick and decisive snapping of a finger-knuckle.

"You're right, Klinger, you're right," announced the old boy whose name seemed to be Ezra. "But we're going to take time to act. And it's still not too late for that!"

"But a dead woman can't—"

"Never mind that," I heard the thinner voice retort. "It's the live woman we've got to count on.

"Do you mean that baby- faced thing you've got in there?" demanded the somewhat incredulous Doctor Klinger.