Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/172

160 relaxed, and his lower jaw fell away, as you may have seen the jaw of a dead man fall.

"Gone?" he echoed, staring at the white-faced nurse.

"The body's gone!" she repeated, with a hopeless little moan that might have meant anything.

"It's gone?" tremulously queried the old weasel, slowly retreating toward the overturned table. "Gone where?"

"Gone from where I carried it! Gone from this house," was the somewhat startling answer.

The three men, the big fat one and the two shriveled up little ones, stood regarding one another in a sort of awed and heavy silence. Then, still without speaking, they turned and followed the uniformed woman out through the door, stunned, apparently, by being asked to believe the unbelievable.