Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/172

 face, she stooped still closer and studied that cluster of flowers with quick and searching eyes.

"But we were to discuss matters of a somewhat confidential nature," protested the official from Washington. "And this dinner was arranged merely that we might talk without interruption and without danger."

"Miss Wimpel will be quite prepared to take a part in that discussion," Kestner calmly announced. Sadie was standing now with her back to the table and was conscious of the fact that Andelman had once more turned toward her. His glance, she saw, was still a hostile one.

"Then the colleague you spoke of as Romano is not to be with us?" the steely-eyed officer inquired.

"Romano, I regret to say, is elsewhere engaged."

Sadie neither heard Kestner's words nor was she longer conscious of her Collet dinner-gown. She was, in fact, struggling with a problem which seemed to lie beyond her powers of comprehension. That problem had arisen from a discovery which she had made quite by accident. And that discovery had been made as she leaned over the vase of Richmond roses circled with smilax. For cunningly buried in the midst of those innocent-looking flowers