Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/321

301 "Yes, I want to know," I said, and my own voice sounded as thin as a seventh carbon-copy. For all the while I was puzzling that empty head of mine as to what the cause of this new-found fortitude of Bud's could be.

"I'm going out through that door," slowly asserted the man with the club-bag. "I'm going out through that door, and out of this house, and you're not going to stop me!"

"Why can't I?" I demanded. Without even being conscious of the act I raised the pistol on a level with my eye.

"Wait!" pleaded Wendy Washburn from where he stood against the wall.

"Why can't I?" I repeated with my eye on the man with the bag.

"Because," retorted Bud with his one-sided smile, "if you remembered me and the way I work a little better, you'd know I never went into a job with a loaded gun, in all my life. It's too risky." I looked down at the heavy automatic. I sprung open the clip-chamber and found it as empty as a last year's bird's-nest.

"It may be empty," said a voice behind me as I looked up just in time to see Bud, with the club-bag in his hand, pass out through the hall door, "but this