Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/199

 would have suggested a weather-beaten but still light-hearted old robin. There was something perkily ingenuous and bird-like in the very movements of this portly diner as he lifted a chafing-dish cover and peered interrogatively into what appeared to be a generous portion of chicken a la King.

Sadie, as she sat gazing at this rotund voluptuary so engrossingly immured in his ventral delights, decided that Wallaby Sam made an ideal figure for the work of a foreign agent. His blitheness of aspect was in itself a discourager of suspicion. His beaming blandness of eye and his rosiness of cheek gave him an outward semblance of care-free innocence in no way suggestive of the international intrigant. And Sadie further realized that if Wallaby Sam had seen her, he was now bent on ignoring her.

So at the moment that he was engaged in prodding critically into the depths of his steaming chafing-dish Sadie took the bull by the horns. She rose from her chair, gathered up her possessions and moved forward until she came to the table of the fat man so engrossed in his collation.

The fat man in question did not even look up as the young lady with the debonair droop and