Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/214

200 "That's truer than you imagine!" retorted my Hero-Man.

"Then what are we going to do about it?" I asked, still uncertain of my ground.

His eye met mine. I don't know what he was about to say. I wasn't even sure that he intended saying anything. But that tableau was interrupted by the noiseless entrance of his servant.

That small-bodied Oriental, in fact, came and stood close behind his master. His attitude was one of veiled expectancy, as though he had been sent for. Yet I could recall no sign or message having gone out from that room.

I saw my Hero-Man tear a small slip from the sheet of paper on which he had been inventorying the contents of the club-bag. On this slip of paper he wrote a sentence or two, in very small script. He gave it to the waiting Jap, without a word of explanation, and the Jap as silently vanished from the room.

It might have been anything, of course. But that unknown message began to worry me. It may have been nothing more than the next day's meat order, or a carriage call, or a trick to intimidate me into a freer channel of confession.

Yet I would have given a good deal to know just