Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/367

Rh inquired, remembering my last quarter of an hour in that same office.

"My dear girl, we're both going to forget about that little flare-up of yours," he condoningly announced.

"But I haven't forgotten about your little flare-up," I pointedly reminded him.

"But, good heavens, Baddie," he contended, with a great air of injured innocence, "you don't s'pose I was responsible for that, do you? Now that you know the lay of the land? Now that you see things straight?"

"That's just the trouble," I told him, "I haven't been able to see things straight!"

He looked at me with well-feigned astonishment, almost with impatience.

"Well, what happens to be stuck in your craw?" he inelegantly inquired.

There were a good many things stuck there, and I intended to let him know it.

"In the first place, whose house was that up the Hudson," I demanded, with a gesture of contempt toward the morose-eyed Michael, "where you gathered in this big-hearted wop with the East Fourteenth Street get-up?"