Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/226

212 figure again stood the butler in the crimson-rambler knickerbockers, with his white stockings visibly knocking together at the knees, while on the floor sat another man servant in uniform, tying a handkerchief about the calf of his leg where a slow rivulet of the color of raspberry vinegar stained the white stocking and flowed on down into the broad-toed patent-leather service pump. As he worried over this improvised bandage he emitted, from time to time, a loud and groaning bleat. But this bleat was pretty well drowned, as a rule, in the quick and impassioned words of Copperhead Kate as she caused her pistol-end to waver from one end of that ludicrous line to the other.

"… And I'm going to find that out," I could hear her cry, in a white heat of anger, "or I'm going to blow the lid off the whole bunch of you! I want to know what's going on in this house, and who's at the bottom of all this mix-up! I want to know why that calm-eyed stiff walked back in here with this bunch of swag! And I want to know why that blond porker there pumped about three grains of morphine into me when I was up on that four-poster." She swung about on the clammy and cowering Doctor Klinger with hate in her eye. "It was some dose, my fat friend, and you'd 'a' had