Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/42

32 stealth about her movements, that air of lazy self-concernment, that pose of gliding indifference to all the world about her. Bud told me that she was an uncommonly clever woman, as much cleverer than Third-Arm Annie, for instance, as Annie herself was cleverer than the every-day shop-lifter. But he stubbornly denied that he had ever worked with her, and claimed that for several years she'd been the gun-moll of a peterman called Whispering Wat, who'd a bullet-wound in his throat that rather interfered with his talking.

Bud nursed an open contempt for yeggs and petermen and lush-dips and that brand of crooks, and it was only when funds ran low that he turned back to actual porch-climbing. He always considered that line of work as a mere apprenticeship. He had his ambitions, had Bud, and sometimes he used to talk of how he'd handle the higher lines of work, once he was ready for the job. But he was never quite sure what this was to be. At one time he'd ramble on about switching back into the wire-tapping game, explaining that it was a game that never grew old and always had a rich sucker-list waiting for easy money. Then at other times he'd talk about the high-life sloughing, and say he wanted the two of us to get so we could saunter into