Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/190

178 looking down at the black club-bag which I was nursing on my lap.

"Oh, yes, I do," I said, resenting the touch of mockery that seemed to be in his voice. "For I've just been trying to will you a quarter of a million dollars!"

That made him sit up. I imagined that it would.

"And I hope you succeeded," he said, with a queer little laugh.

"It wasn't my fault that I didn't," I told him, realizing for the first time that I was both tired and hungry. I began to see for the first time, too, what a strain I'd been under, for the last two or three hours. I felt like a whale who'd come up to breathe. And it was pretty comfortable in that big padded seat, purring safely through the city streets close beside a man you weren't a bit afraid of.

"And having failed in that charitable effort, what was your next to be?" he inquired.

"I was going to lope for a lunchery," I told him, still again finding a sort of perverse joy in keying my English as close to the talk of the underworld as I could.

He laughed again, easily and lazily.

"Then why not take pity on my desolation and have supper with me?" he asked.