Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/82

72 on which lay a discarded newspaper. I knew that movement as well as though it were written in Roman script. That con-man had caught sight of either a bluebird or a singed cat—which latter is simply an officer in plain-clothes. And he didn't want his trail to cross his enemy's.

So I dropped down on the same bench with Pinky, with a fastidious little sigh of weariness. I could see him inspecting me out of the corner of his eye as he bent over his paper. My being there didn't seem to add to his troubles. What worried him was that plain-clothes man who walked slowly by. Pinky's nose was within six inches of the sporting-page as that singed cat drifted so artlessly past our bench. But I had seen the officer's eye take in Pinky's intent figure. I knew he wasn't so artless as he looked.

Instinct, I suppose, advised Pinky of the same fact, for he wasn't letting one move of the enemy escape him, over the edge of that newspaper. Then he turned and studied my face.

He shifted a little closer along the bench. I knew, even before he started to speak, that he had decided to take a chance. And for some reason which I couldn't quite define, I felt disappointed and disturbed at that decision of his.