Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/179

Rh It was my turn at bat; and I let her know it.

"That's not what you're here to worry about. Your present trouble is whether you take that dress off while you're still warm or I take it off before you get cold!"

Once more she gave me the benefit of her studious green eyes.

"Then you get that gun away from my ribs," she said, for I had made my stare quite as belligerent as her own. And I had the hardware to back it up. "Not on your life," I told her. But I let her back away a foot or two.

"And then what've I got to do?" she asked, as she took out her hat-pins and tossed the hat into a yellow brocaded chair beside her.

"You're going to put on this nice silk nightie and go to bed," I told her.

"To bed?"

"Yes, to bed."

"Where?" she demanded, with a blink of incredulity.

"In the swellest bedroom," I retorted, "that you ever stretched out in."

I wasn't sorry to see that she was beginning to unpeel.

"I didn't come here to stretch out in any bed,"