Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/29

Rh chair. And at the same moment that he got up from his chair I got up from mine. It brought the scene in Big Ben's office back to me, in a sudden sickening flash. Only, this time, it didn't seem to terrify me. It was more the feeling you get from a Coney Island steamer-deck when it swings around into open water, and begins to rise and fall, and make you wish you'd been a little more careful about what you'd eaten.

"Why're you getting so up-stage about all this?" he jocularly inquired, as he came closer to me. "Can you give me work?" I demanded, as I rounded the desk, for the Big War I'd been through had taught me it was always best to have a buffer state between belligerents.

"Do you want it bad?" he asked, still smiling.

"I've got to have it," I confessed.

"You've got to," he repeated.

"I've got to," I told him.

"Then, honey-child, we're sure going to come to terms," he said, as he rocked on his heels and once more eyed me up and down. I knew, then, that the call was going in for a quick curtain. Yet even as I knew it I kept dumbly asking why lightning should strike twice in the same place. It didn't seem fair; it didn't even seem reasonable. But it's the first