Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/259

Rh she'll try to tell? Who'll swallow the explanation of how she first gained admission here?" "Explanations be damned!" piped the angry voice of old Enoch Bartlett. "We don't want explanations! What we want is a will, sir, a will duly signed and witnessed by Clarissa Rhinelander Bartlett!"

"Of course you do," acknowledged the other. "But you don't also want ten years in state's prison, do you? If you do, sir, simply continue along the path you have been following! For there's a muddle here that's got to be cleared up before any man in this room can feel clear to leave this house!"

"Fiddlesticks!" ejaculated Enoch Bartlett.

"But who got us into that muddle?" demanded his brother Ezra.

"That girl did, of course!"

"Then that girl's got to pay for it! She's had her fun, by gad, and now she can face the music!"

"And we've got Locke, haven't we, to back us up in anything we claim?" demanded the other shrill-voiced old rascal. "And there's Klinger here, to do the same!"

That talk was none too lucid to me, but there were a few features about it that kept my ear glued to the door panel. For I knew as I listened that it