Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/45

Rh guests, who undressed there before piking out for the beach in their bathing-suits.

Bud decided there was good booty in those lockers every afternoon, so he planned to have me call the locker-girl away for as long as I could hold her. Then he'd work his bone-keys and make his clean-up. It wasn't work he liked, but a turn of hard luck had left the coin-coffer at low ebb, and he had to take the first decent chance that came along.

A plump actor's wife came puddling in, in a wet bathing-suit, and caught Bud in her locker. Bud apologized and explained that his wife had sent him in from the beach for her rings, and he was awfully sorry he'd blundered into the wrong cubby-hole. Then he had the nerve to open up the second next locker, still under that plump dowager's eye, unpin an emerald pendant that was fastened to a waist hanging there, relock the door, and start smilingly back for the beach.

I didn't dream anything was wrong, at the time, until the plump person began to scream at the top of her lungs that she'd been robbed. Even then I didn't worry. I merely sauntered on through the tunnel to the beach, where I spotted Bud losing himself in the crowd. But the busty lady in the wet