Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/293

Rh eggs. Then he nodded in the direction of the library, where I had answered that mysterious telephone call. The eagle, I knew, was still busy with its clawing act.

"Were you expecting a visitor?" he asked, in an offhanded and impersonal sort of way.

"I'd prefer not having one!" I told him, quite as impersonally.

"I trust you'll not be disappointed in that wish," he said. But there was a note of constraint in his voice as he spoke. And his eyes, from time to time, kept searching my face.

"And you?" I inquired, remembering the sleeper above us. "Were you expecting a visitor?"

"It would rather interfere with our plans, wouldn't it?" he suggested.

I looked up at him.

"What plans have we?" I asked. We were both eating by this time. And I observed that his appetite was quite as normal as my own.

"That's something we have to talk over," he asknowledged [sic].

"I think we have a great deal to talk over," I amended.

"Yes, a great deal," he agreed, as he passed me