Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/147

 disguise the fact that her empty little head was for once working overtime, she languidly took up a cigarette and lighted it. Then she looked at Keudell, with pity in her eye.

"Honest, King, yuh wring me heart wit' thoughts o' the ol' days when the rubes were buyin' gold bricks down to Union Square! For yuh're sure workin' the wrong game! Ain't yuh ever goin' to git gerry to the fact yuh can't throw a scare into us two? And ain't yuh ever goin' to wake up to the fact that if yuh want them submarine models yuh gotta git down and talk business?"

The one thing for which Sadie was now maneuvering was time. Dorgan she no longer feared. He and his destinies were nothing to her. All she remembered was that she carried certain papers which must reach either Wilsnach or Kestner, and nobody else. She carried them, yet she carried them at a time when their possession was a peril. The heavy-witted Dorgan, she felt, might still betray her to save his own scalp. And she felt equally assured of the fact that Keudell himself would kill her as readily as he would strike a match, rather than let those gun plans slip through his fingers.

"There's been too much talking business," was