Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/314

294 "I didn't come here for any afternoon-tea séance," announced Bud. "I want that bag, and I want everything that's in it!"

A second great wave of pity for that white-faced man with the automatic pistol in his hand swept through me. I don't know exactly what it was, or why it was, but I felt so sorry for Bud Griswold as he stood there that I could have leaned on his shoulder and cried like a baby.

It wasn't so much that he was taking something away from me which I couldn't define, that he was roughly obliterating me from his existence, that he was humiliating me before the one man whose scorn would always be doubly hard to bear. It was more that he was humiliating himself, denuding his poor pathetic figure of its last shred of dignity, robbing himself of every hope for the future.

I wondered, as I stood staring at him, if for the first time in my life I was seeing him in his true light; if, during the last two or three years, I had indeed learned to look on him and his kind, and all they stood for, as I had never been able to look on them before. And I felt a sudden lump in my throat as I stood there asking myself these questions.

"Bud," I began, with a quaver in my voice which