Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/369

Rh who sat so wistfully and yet so peevishly hunched up on the far side of the room.

"Hey?" cried Brother Enoch, with his hand behind his ear.

"What's that?" snapped out Brother Ezra, with war in his faded old eye.

"Those two old feebs!" was Big Ben's none too Mattering exclamation. "Hasn't it ever struck you that these two old ginks are a little nutty?" It had not. But I found no chance to deny it, for that indirect accusation had brought Ezra Bartlett out of his chair like a hornet out of its nest.

"Nutty?" he piped in his shrill and tremulous falsetto of indignation. "We're no more nutty than you are. We may have been paid to come here and act the fool, but we didn't come here to be called crooks and accused of stealing out of wall-safes and killing young women! We—"

"The less you two old guys talk the better!" Big Ben Locke vigorously reminded him.

"But I've stood too much of this without talking, and now I'm going to have my say out. D'you understand? I'm going to say what I've got to say and I'm going—"

"Just a minute," I broke in, as soothingly as I could. "Who was it paid you for this work?"