Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/93

Rh for he began to back away, a shuffling step at a time. But his thin old weasel face was still studying my face.

"Really, you know, I wouldn't harm you for the world," he argued. "Nothing was—"

But I cut him short.

"And how dare you speak to me?" I continued, still in my white heat of indignation. I was in a rage at the whole world. And he was all I had to take it out on.

"But, my dear young lady, I'm compelled to speak to you," persisted that weasel-faced old man, with his shoulders uplifted and a sort of apologetic blink about his wistful old eyes. I noticed, for the first time, the look of strained anxiety, of hungry eagerness, which made those deep-set old eyes rather remarkable. But the rest of the face was as hard as nails.

"What compels you to?" I demanded, staring back at him. There was a sneer in my question, but it didn't seem to jolt him in the least. "What do you want, anyway?" I asked with all the world-weariness I could possibly throw into the question.

I began to realize that I wasn't being buzzed over by an zooing-bug. The old man, I began to see, was something more than a street masher. But he