Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/280

262 "Not a bit!" I told him.

"Would you feel safer with this?" he next inquired, I noticed that he was holding out a pearl-handled Colt revolver. "What am I to do with it?" I asked.

"Keep it under you pillow," he explained. That pregnant word of "pillow" caught and held my attention. The man who had been so intently studying my face seemed to realize this.

"There's a cream and gold room at the head of the stairway—the first door at the right there!"

He ventured this announcement with a certain vague constraint which made me smile in spite of myself.

"Thank you, Prince Charming!"

"I think you'll find everything there—and quite comfortable," he went on, still a little embarrassed by my steady stare.

"You seem to know this house," I told him.

"I at least know that it is empty," he retorted.

"You're quite sure of that?" I asked, already a step or two up the stairway.

"Positive!" he replied.

"Then me for the hay!" I flippantly announced.

"I'll wait here until you've locked yourself in," he rather ponderously explained.