Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/132

120 So I calmly reached over, pulled the ivory tinted candle out of its socket, wiped the head of the candlestick off with a face chamois that lay on the table-top, and meditatively weighed the column of metal in my hand. It felt the way a well-balanced bat must feel to a league player when he plants his heels down beside the home-plate.

"What are you doing with that?" asked the startled Miss Ledwidge, as she stepped back from the open door to see what had been keeping me.

I didn't answer her for a moment, for my attention was otherwise engaged. It was engaged in recovering from the rug at my feet a finger-ring that had fallen from that hollow candlestick as I so menacingly waved it up and down. It was a remarkable ring, made up of a large-sized pigeon-blood ruby surrounded by black pearls. That it should be hidden away in such a place struck me as odd. So I slipped it on my finger, stones in, until I had a better chance to look it over.

"That," I calmly explained to Miss Ledwidge, as I took up my candlestick again, "is going to stay right with me in bed. And if any one tries to spring any second little surprise on me, I'm going to spring this on them!"

That trained nurse laughed openly, for the first