Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/373

Rh his side. She did so with a note of quiet authority which, for a moment, I was tempted to resent. But I had no way of knowing what happened between them as they talked together, low and earnestly. Once, and once only, he turned and stared at me. But he did so with a look of pale abstraction which convinced me that he was thinking of entirely different things. And I realized that things were continuing to shape themselves, that day, to make me feel much less superior than I had felt.

So I sat there, looking meekly around me. I realized, as I did so that we were a very interesting collection, on the whole. But I realized at the same time that I'd seen about enough of that collection, I was tired of them, from Copperhead Kate and her green snake's eyes to the little weasel in black and Pinky McClone in his sulphur-colored gloves. I was tired of wearing a compress of beefsteak on one eye. I was blue and lonesome, and felt pretty much like a dying duck in a thunderstorm. I was home-sick for something which I couldn't explain, even to myself, although a still voice somewhere under my fifth rib kept whispering there was a better place for beefsteak than over one's cheek-bone.

And it was Big Ben Locke's sonorous chest-tones that brought me suddenly out of myself.