Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/260

244 was me, Little Me, they were talking about. And it wasn't exactly the sort of conversation that you make soothing-sirup out of. I may have been tired in body, but I was awake to the finger-tips as I stood there in the darkness overhearing that star-chamber discussion as to how I was to be disposed of.

"But what about this man Washburn?" I heard Enoch Bartlett's voice inquire. I waited, without breathing, to catch the answer to that question.

"Washburn?" scoffed the old lawyer. "Why, my personal conviction is that Washburn is the man who's duping us all, and that he's a bigger crook than the woman herself!"

"It's not a matter of conviction," broke in Doctor Klinger's heavily contemptuous voice. "It's a matter of common knowledge, a matter of fact!"

"What is?" bit out Ezra Bartlett.

"That this man Washburn is nothing but a social highwayman! That he lives by his wits!" "Of which he has more, apparently, than a number of people in this immediate neighborhood," piped out the irate Enoch Bartlett.

"But which of those two women was working with Washburn?" demanded the more practical-minded of the two old brothers.