Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/137

 one of the sheets in front of her. "Do you call that a cottage wall or the cross-section of a coast gun?"

"I never seen no gun like that!" avowed Sadie, squinting closer at the paper.

"No; you never did! And what's more, not six people outside official circles ever did either! Do you know what that is? That's the government's new seventeen-inch coast gun with the secret Winton breech-block. There's the whole business, right there on two sheets of paper!"

"It don't look much t' me!" protested the unimpressed Sadie with a shoulder-shrug of disdain.

"Well, it will certainly look good to any gun expert who happens to clap eyes on it. And it'll look so good to a man hanging out up at the Alsatia Hotel that he'll hand you over quite a few hundred dollars for those specifications!"

"What man?" inquired the still skeptic Sadie.

"He's a guy called Breitman!"

Sadie stooped lower over the paper that still lay on the table. For a distinct quiver of nerves sped through her body at the mention of that all too familiar name. Breitman, she remembered, was one of the aliases under which her old-time enemy, Wallaby Sam, was wont to masquerade.