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128 closer over my face, "if you make one move to interfere with these plans of ours, you'll never get out of this house alive!"

He was trying to make himself out the human puff-adder, all right. But there was one thing that didn't escape me. If he hadn't for some reason or other been as scared of me as I was of him, he would never have stooped to that threat. So I sat tight. He, on his part, tried to accentuate that threat by increasing the pressure of his claws on my flesh.

"Hold on there!" I told him, in no tempered tone of voice. "You're hurting my wrist. And you may as well know right now that you can't try to man-haul [sic] me and get away with it!"

"Hssssh!" he warned, desperately, with a worried look over his shoulder. And for a moment I even imagined he was going to see what choking could do to shut me off.

"Then play your side square," I told him, "or you needn't expect me to play my side that way!"

He looked down at me for a moment or two, and his eyes weren't exactly beaming with love-light. Then he took a deep breath, tiptoed to the door, peered out, and hurried back to the side of the bed.

"Now remember, it will be Mr. Scripps, Mr.