Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/158

146 I may have whispered it, but I said it with decision. And I could feel the sudden electric stir that crept through that shadowy room.

"It's not?" mildly challenged Theobald Scripps. He straightened up, regarding me over his spectacle-rims, with pained and sorrowful eyes. Then his look of melancholy bewilderment slowly merged into one of actual animosity. For he saw that he couldn't stare me down.

"No," I whispered up to him, meeting his threatening eye with all the pertness I could throw into that look. "There's another item that I'd like inserted."

"But this is most irregular," cut in the old lawyer.

"Is this my will, or yours?" I calmly whispered back to him.

"Your will, of course, my child," murmured the old scoundrel, with an appealing side-glance at old Ezra Bartlett, who'd pressed in a little closer to the bedside.

"And it's my dying request," I whispered up to them. I could see old Ezra's jaw clench. He leaned close in over the bed. His halo of silvery hair, under the circumstances, made him look funny. For I don't think I ever saw an uglier face, in all my life, than his was at that moment.