Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/36

26 no woman about to whom I could go for advice. I remember the day, on the Monday after he'd sent me ahead of him to Philadelphia, when I saw him filing a key-blank and he confessed that he was really a house-man. I was so green then that I didn't even know what the word meant. He had to go on and explain that he was really a supper-worker, and a supper-worker, I duly came to understand, was the underworld phrase for a dress-suit burglar.

It took my breath away—and I think my common sense must have gone with it. But the strange city intimidated me. I felt friendless and helpless and alone, in that great town of unknown streets and unknown faces. And when Bud left me to think it out and come to some sort of decision, I was foolish enough to feel relieved when I heard his step in the hall. And that decided me. I became a chicken-stall for a confidence man and second-story worker.

The thing that most deluded me, I think, was Bud's lopsided decency. For outside of his work he was the cleanest-minded man I had ever met. He had been true blue in his promise about being white to me, and I didn't want to add to that color-scheme by showing a yellow streak. So I was weak enough to let him surmise that I was going to stick. I'm