Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/41

Rh She was well named, all right. For she wore her hair low over her ears, and this hair was of thick copper, standing out on each side of her head in two rounded lobes. Her nose was rather short and blunt, and these two lobes seemed to add to the receding line of her flattened profile. So when you saw her at certain angles she kind of brought your heart up into your mouth, for her head was as much like the head of a copperhead snake as any human cranium could be. This snaky feeling was carried out still further in her movements themselves, for they were languid and lazy and graceful, as a rule. There was a scaly sort of shimmer about her, too, a smoothness and quietness which seemed to mark her down as belonging more to the shadows than the open street.

When her trail would cross with Bud's I'd have to edge away and fade into the background, for it was Bud's play, of course, always to deny that I was chicken-stalling for him. He wouldn't even recognize me in public, though we had a sign-language that would have made any Sicilian black-hander green-eyed with envy. I'd have to sit back and see Copperhead Kate dragging out her heart-to-heart talk with my Bud, and even then I was in some wordless way afraid of her, I hated that touch of