Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/375

Rh trying to check the bag at the parcel-room in the Grand Central Station. It was a very clever dodge, and, I suppose, they had hit on it beforehand. But when I stepped up for the bag the woman simply melted away and lost herself in the crowd!" "So he's ready to slough with that snake again!" Copperhead Kate venomously and audibly meditated. Like all other women, she clearly disapproved of rivals. But her meditations were cut short by a querulous question from one of the old weasels.

"You may have got your bag back," he quavered, "but what we want to know is: Where is that body?"

"Body?" echoed Wendy, not understanding the question.

It was the quiet-eyed Alicia Ledwidge who interposed at this point.

"He means the body of that poor maid, the girl called Margaret Hueffer," she pointed out to my Hero-Man. Then she turned to old Ezra Bartlett.

"That body was taken away by the undertaker, as happens with quite a number of bodies in this city," she calmly and prosaically explained to the two round-eyed old conspirators.

"Then why were we told to claim that this young