Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/94

84 seemed to find it hard to explain just what his business might be.


 * T wanted to—" Then he stopped short, as though the look of belligerency on my face left him a little doubtful as to what extremes I might go. Then he peered up and down the street, to make sure we were alone. Then he took a step closer to me. "The—the truth is I—er—wanted to explain something—something which, I am afraid, is not going to prove easy of explanation."

"Then why take the chance?" I curtly inquired, for I was still an enemy to everything in shoe-leather.

But with all his timidity he had no intention of being side-tracked by any mere display of bad temper. And it wasn't so easy to stay in a rage at that funny little man with the ferrety gray eyes. That much I was discovering, even against my will. "Because I think you are in rather desperate straits, and I want to help you," he explained. The old idiot had apparently thought I was considering the movie-stunt of taking a header into one of the park-lakes. Life may have looked anything but promising on that particular evening, but I certainly had no intention of messing up my permanent-wave with pond-weeds.