Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/148

136 tempt at Agatha Widdemer's spasmodic outburst of tears.

The silence of the thing was beginning to get on my nerves and I wasn't sorry when old Theobald Scripps, the family lawyer, came sidling into the room. He fitted his name; there was no doubt of that. He was a thin-nosed, thin-haired old snipe of about sixty. A pair of glimmering glasses rode the end of his narrow nose like a jockey riding the thinnest of racers. His eyes were pale, his lips were pinched and blue, and his protruding Adam's apple had the trick of working up and down, as he spoke, in a most fascinating manner, so that you had to watch it, even though you wanted to or not.

I eyed him and his acrobatic Adam's apple from my cave of gloom as he tiptoed mincingly over to the doctor, whispered with him for a moment or two, and then looked solemnly about at that shadowy group at the far end of the room.

"This is painful, unspeakably painful," he said with a sigh, as he produced a bulky and legal-looking paper from his pocket. As he was unfolding this I noticed, for the first time, that the two gawky girls had politely anticipated my death by the use of two black-bordered handkerchiefs. And I had to bury a whoop in my pillow. I just couldn't help it.