Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/222

208 lope, gathering in at one bound the prize which only months of browsing could have prepared for him?

I suddenly remembered what Wendy Washburn had said to me, that first day of our meeting. "I do a little in the hold-up line myself, you know!" he had announced with that half-satiric smile of his. And as we had eaten supper together that night he had tentatively though flippantly suggested that we go into partnership. Could he have been more sincere than I imagined when he put that question to me? And was he in some way associated with Copperhead Kate's visit to that house of plots and counter-plots? Could he, after all, be a sort of Bud Griswold in a Fifth Avenue setting, going back to complete a haul which must in some way have miscarried?

Then I stopped thinking altogether. For as I sat there in the darkness of the car I caught sight of a second man in a rain-coat as he stopped before the house, looked about, and then hurried up the steps.

This second man, I saw, took out a pass-key, unlocked the door and swung it open. But the moment he did so the muffled sound of a revolver-shot rang out from the house he was about to enter. The effect of that shot on him was instantaneous.