Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/317

297 even while I felt the hopelessness of trying to argue with him.

"What's in that club-bag there will do me a considerable time," he announced. His flippancy hurt me even more than his sullenness. It felt like the flick of a whip-lash in the face. It startled me into a sort of desperation.

"Bud, if you give me that automatic I'll go with you, wherever you want," I told him, as I stepped closer to his side.

But as I advanced he backed slowly away.

"Not on your life!" he said with grim deliberation.

"You mean you don't want me?" I cried.

"I mean I don't fall for any trick like that!"

"Then you don't trust me?" I demanded. "You're through with me? You don't even want me to go with you?"

He shook his head.

"You couldn't come if you wanted to," he said with a derisive bark of a laugh.

"Why couldn't I?"

"This guy here wouldn't let you," he explained, with a pistol-wave in the direction of Wendy Washburn.