Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/224

210 though that room lay somewhere in the immediate neighborhood. But it was an angry voice, tense, imperative, shrill with indignation.

I groped my way slowly onward, with fingers outstretched, like the whiskers of a house-cat, until I came to a wall. Then I felt along this wall until I reached a door. I found the knob, nursed it carefully in my hand, and slowly turned it.

The door opened without a sound. But across that door, I saw, hung a pair of heavy portières. So I parted these, cautiously, where a thin pencil of light showed along their edges. And as I did so I beheld a scene which left me all eyes, and a little flighty in the region where that heavy automatic had been hanging for so long.

For directly in front of the door, with her back to me, I saw Copperhead Kate. She was still dressed, with my flesh-colored crêpe-de-chine nightie, which made her look ridiculous, over her other clothes, but over the night-dress she now wore a man's rain-coat hanging loose at the front. Her fringe of russet bangs was disarranged, and as she leaned forward with her head thrust out, there was something vindictive and tigerish in her attitude, something that reminded me of a cat that had made ready to spring. She was no longer like a snake;