Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/154

142 end of the room only added to the confusion. I began to suspect that I wasn't going to be troubled by any too many and lingering farewells.

The one fact that targeted straight home to my brain, however, was the extent of the estate that snipe-nosed old lawyer was itemizing there as he stood beside me.

As I lay there with half-closed eyes I began to wake up to the enormity of the plot into which I had been dragged. It began to dawn on me that I was the leading lady in a coup that involved millions of dollars. I no longer felt vaguely sorry for the girl who should have been sleeping in that bed, who should be wearing my flimsy garment of crêpe-de-chine and directing this fortune, which must have been hers for so short a while, to the people she cared about, to the friends she was fond of. Her part in that drama, whatever it may have been, was over forever.

But as I lay there listening to that yellow-faced old lawyer while he went into detailed descriptions of sundry and divers blocks of stock and parcels of real estate, there was a rattle from that inevitable chain which drags at every one's heels, linking them to the past. And with that rattle an idea suddenly came to me. It seemed to start at the base of my