Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/167

Rh was clearly a Celtic challenge to any one who cared openly to deny him that information.

"Who are you?" piped out old Enoch Bartlett, in a voice shrill with resentment.

Pinky squared about on him. And I must admit that he looked magnificent, that youthful ex-river pirate with the fire of Irish anger in his sky-blue eye. But it was Doctor Klinger who next advanced to the charge.

"What do you want here?" inquired the man of medicine as he rounded the bed.

"I want the woman I'm going to marry," stentoriously announced Pinky McClone, "the woman you're all trying to keep away from me!"

The three old men by this time were trying to edge in between Pinky and me. But with one sweep of his life-guard arm he sent that frail-legged trio scattering. Then he flung back the curtains that screened me from the vulgar world.

I blinked at him, with my face twisted up, for it might be painful, I remembered, to have Pinky recognize me.

Thanks to the uncertain light and my tombstone make-up he showed no promise of any such intelligence. Disgust, in fact, was about all I could see on his weather bronzed face.