Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/237

Rh "I must 've dreamed it," she equivocated.

"Who told you?" I insisted.

"A butler who was fired from here early last winter."

"And that butler knew valuable papers were in this safe?"

She blinked at me meditatively. Then she laughed.

"Gee, no! All I was after was shiners—what your friend Bud used to call ice."

"Never mind my friend Bud," I called out to her, resenting the note of mockery that had crept into her voice. "But be so good as to tell me how you got hold of this second automatic."

Copperhead Kate hesitated for a moment. Her face looked genuinely perplexed.

"A ghost gave it to me," she finally explained.

An uneasy move went down the line.

"A what?" I demanded.

"I was lyin' up in that four-poster when something in white, with a white face, crept into the room. It came over to the bed. It stood there, without moving. Then without a word it dropped that gun into my hand and turned and slipped out of the room again."

Here was still another mystery in that crowded