Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/120

 peering down at the languid-bodied goldfish circling idly about their iridescent glass bowl, moodily pondering the question as to whether or not goldfish were good to eat.

Then she looked up suddenly at the sound of angry voices, the reproving throaty tones of the negress Zuleika and the heavier challenging notes of the intruder who was not to be kept back.

Then she rounded the table and stood between it and the cabinet curtains, watching the door.

"It's that wire-haired terrier come back!" she lugubriously announced, as she took a deep breath and waited for the door to open.

A moment after the door had opened Sadie Wimpel saw that it was indeed Dorgan. But it was a figure much different to the Dorgan who had stepped into her reception-room a few hours earlier in the day. About him, however, still clung a forlorn air of bravado, seeming to announce him as a spirit not easily cowed.

Sadie, as she stood staring at him, decided that much of that woebegone buoyancy was based on the courage which is paid for over a mahogany bar. For Dorgan's figure was not an inspiriting one. Over one eye and surrounding his entire head was