Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/358

338 "Why?" I inquired.

"We'll know that much earlier than you expect," announced Clarissa Bartlett. The next minute she had swung in beside the curb and brought the car to a stop. I glanced up, with my one good eye, at the limestone front of the house that towered beside us. I knew it at once. It was the house of intrigue which I had so hurriedly left the night before.

"Shall I come?" I asked the girl who was already getting down from the car-seat. For something about the newer demeanor of hers tended to leave me less self-assertive than I had been.

"Of course," was her curt reply as she stepped across the sidewalk. She passed within two feet of what I knew to be a plain-clothes man posted there. But she ignored him as completely as though he'd been a gargoyle, or a newel-post figure belonging to the limestone steps up which she was so purposefully striding.

I could see her finger play on the electric bell. It pressed again and again. It prodded there. It jiggled and danced and see-sawed. But it was several minutes before there was any response to that authoritative summons.

Then one of the heavy front doors opened, ever so little, and two timorous and quite colorless faces