Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/356

336 a generous slice of raw beefsteak. But with that one good eye I was able to see that I was in an automobile and that this automobile was once more taking me down through the streets of what was unmistakably New York.

Bent over the wheel, close beside me, I could make out a clear-eyed and firm-lipped young woman. And my second blink at her convinced me of the fact that it was Clarissa Bartlett herself.

That made me sit up. It was not so easy as it sounds, for my head seemed to be the size of a Zeppelin and I could feel a distinct sense of burning under the sticky surface of the raw beefsteak.

The next thing that came to my attention was the fact that the girl driving the car wore a very familiar-looking coat of Hudson seal. The memory of where it had come from brought the past suddenly back to me.

"Feeling better?" asked the girl at the wheel. She seemed inclined, on the whole, to give me little attention. Things of more moment, it was plain, were occupying her mind.

"Yes," I told her. And I might have added that I was also feeling a little less superior. But instead of doing that I readjusted the slab of beefsteak over my blackened eye.