Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/113



T was ten minutes later that Sadie Wimpel seated herself in her reptiliously embroidered palm-reading parlor. Leaning back in her chair of state, she languidly tapped a cork-tipped cigarette on her plaster-of-Paris property-skull. As she did so Wilsnach, seated on the other side of the table, turned over and over the heavy manila envelope which she had quietly yet triumphantly handed to him. Then he tore it open.

He leaned forward over the papers with a quite audible gasp of bewilderment, which Sadie made it a point to ignore, being at the moment studiously engaged in blowing a smoke-ring in between the slightly parted curtains of her materializing cabinet.

Then Wilsnach, rounding the table, came and stared down at the pert young face so thickly covered with rice-powder.

"Sadie," he announced, a little tremulously, "you've got 'em!"

"Huh?" inquired the languid-eyed Sadie, 101