Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/299

Rh "What man?" he inquired.

"Bud Griswold," I told him, with a touch of malice. "Bud always claimed that a good front helped out in our line of business!"

"Our line of business!" echoed Wendy Washburn, in a sort of groan.

"Well, isn't it about the same as your line of business?" I demanded. He looked at me vacant-eyed, for a moment or two. Then he sat back in a brown study.

"I think I resent, more than anything else, that man's influence over you," he finally asserted. He even sighed, I suppose at the memory of my misspent life.

"There was one thing that Bud was rather particular about," I said with all the sugary indifference that I could command, "and that was to respect the dead!"

"The dead?" he echoed, batting his eyes with perplexity. Then he seemed to waken up to the fact that I had been hurling a harpoon at him, for he looked self-conscious and awkward.

"But so many of us are half dead without quite realizing it," he lamely contended, doing his best to emulate the humble cuttlefish.

"Thank you!" I retorted.