Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/56

 SAT on the park bench, thinking it all over. I sat there in the paling light, with the distant hum of the city in my ears, going over those earlier days, scene by scene and event by event.

A little old man in rusty black ambled by me, but he had come and gone before my abstracted eyes took note of him. The gray squirrel ventured back to his earlier playground, circling discreetly about the stranger who was in too deep a trance to remember that it was about time for the handing out of a peanut or two. But I was thinking of bigger things than park squirrels as I sat there with a five-reeled tangle that people call life once more unrolling before my eyes. I was busy recalling how that meeting with the Hero-Man changed me, and changed even Bud Griswold. For Bud's manner toward me, after that strange evening at Long Beach, was distinctly a different one. He was, I could see, secretly and smolderingly jealous of the mysterious and cool-eyed Wendy Washburn. He