Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/303

Rh "By the way, would you regard me as clever as Bud Griswold?" he somewhat startled me by asking.

"You've had more chances, I think, than Bud ever did," I told him. "And you may laugh at me for saying it, but outside his work Bud was the cleanest-living man I ever knew."

"You mean you always considered him that?"

"Always," I affirmed.

"Of course you would," he agreed.

"Why the 'of course'?" I demanded.

"Otherwise you'd never have worked with him," explained my Hero-Man, with a frown of trouble on his fastidious-looking forehead. "But with all due deference to this same Bud, I can't help feeling that his vision was limited. As far as I can estimate him, he was big in just one thing. And that one thing was his treatment of—no, not exactly his treatment of you, but his appreciation of you!"

I felt in no way flattered over that left-handed compliment.

"You never knew Bud Griswold as I knew him," I retorted, trying to speak as calmly as I could. "He may have been nothing better than a confidence-man, but in his own blind way he was always trying to grope up to better things. His thinking may have been all wrong—I suppose the thinking of every