Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/127

 get away with it?" was Dorgan's angry demand. "Not much! He tried to put one over on me, and he's going to pay for it!"

Sadie deemed it best to follow her new tack of bull-baiting.

"Yuh look as though yuh'd been makin' him pay for it!" was the girl's contemptuous rejoinder.

Dorgan was on his feet in a twinkling. There was something more than ever taurine about the squared shoulders and the belligerently lowered head.

"Give me those papers," was his quiet, unlocked for demand. "Give me those papers, and I'll show you!"

Sadie's lips still curled with contempt, but in her opulent young bosom she experienced a feeling not unlike that which comes to the passenger of an express-elevator on its downward flight. It was the fatal demand at last. And she could see no way of evading it.

She dropped into her chair, behind the black-draped table, and made a pretense of fumbling with her skirt-edges. Then she suddenly sat up, looked at Dorgan's expectantly poised figure, and from Dorgan turned her gaze toward the door.