Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/83

Rh "For the love o' Gawd, lady," he said in a hurried and husky sort of whisper, "will you help me out?"

I gave him the icicle-eye, pretending not to know what he was driving at.

"A big strong man like you ought to be ashamed of begging on the streets," I gently but firmly told him. But he brushed this aside with an impatient snort.

"Lady, you can save me from ten years in a cell. You can do it by no more than a move o' the hand."

"What must I do?" I inquired.

He sat there with his legs crossed, and the newspaper held up in front of him. But behind that screen, I knew, he was a terribly frightened man. His bronzed face was exactly the color of old cheese.

"That man coming toward us is a policeman. Only he's wearing plain-clothes. They've been hounding me since last winter. He'll be gathering me in, and when he gets me there I'll be frisked!"

"What difference will that make?" I asked. "And what do you mean by being frisked, anyway?" But I had to smile in spite of myself. It seemed so much like old times.

"Get this under your clothes!" he said out of the corner of his mouth. He said it hurriedly, and almost roughly, for his time of argument had