Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/15

Rh ing the shake in my knees. I hated to see him stare at me with those hungry-looking eyes of his, like an old mastiff's. It seemed to demean him, that incongruous humility of his, almost as much as it demeaned me. It seemed to leave the whole world fetid and tainted, like the smoke-laden and breathed-over air of a "revue" theater when you happen in on the last act. It made me ache for out-of-doors, for the final sanity of a fresh wind against my face.

There was a time, I remembered, when it might not have meant so much to me. But things were different now. I'd worn the shoe-leather of civilization, and I had to face its penalty of being tender-footed. So a feeling strangely like hate smoldered deep down in my heart, hate for that heavy-bodied animal who seemed something of the Stone Age where man stunned his dinner with a club and ate it raw.

"Baddie," that poor purblind cave-man in the twentieth-century swivel chair was trying to tell me, "you're too hanged good-looking for this sleuthing work here!"

I looked at him. He seemed almost pathetic, with that sirupy sort of smile wrinkling his big ursine face. And for a moment I was able to remarshal my scattering lines of courage.