Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/246

230 my two automatics, and then the club-bag full of loot.

I wasn't so interested in this, at the moment, as I was in the discovery that Copperhead Kate, taking advantage of that distracting movement, had sidled closer about to the portières and was creeping unobserved out through them. I called to the big hulk still holding me, but he was too intent on the bird in his hand to think of the one slipping off through the bush. Then I twisted about and tried to gasp out a hurried word of warning to Wendy Washburn himself.

But my one-time Hero-Man, I discovered, had also quietly and mysteriously vanished from the room. And I found something in the well-timed disappearance of those two figures which seemed to crown my darkest suspicions.

"What'll we do with her?" Big Ben was demanding, a little out of breath, for I was still fighting like a terrier to break away from that south-paw clutch of his.

It was the weasel-eyed old Ezra Bartlett who answered that question. He had been stooping before me, in a sort of a crouch, with his claw-like hands over his slightly crooked knees, staring exultantly into my face. I'd been too busy to give him much