Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/204

 chirpily inquiring if it didn't kind of remind him of other days. And he continued to study her as she sat at his side in a taxicab, nonchalantly smoking a cigarette as they made their way to his rooms.

Sadie, on the other hand, was by no means favorably impressed with either the unsavory neighborhood or the blank-fronted side-street house wherein Wallaby Sam acknowledged those rooms to be. But she showed no hesitation as she stepped from the taxicab and waited for her ruddy-cheeked companion to unlock the house-door. She was not afraid of Wallaby Sam as she would have been of Keudell. And she had sufficiently run the gauntlet of forbidding-fronted houses to be no longer intimidated by them.

"We'll go to my office on the first floor up," explained Wallaby Sam, as he ushered her in. He switched on the hall lights and led Sadie toward the stairway which faced them. He touched another light-button at the head of the stairs, unlocked a massive-looking door and opened it.

"Be so good as to switch on the light," he politely requested as he ushered Sadie through this second door and pointed to the push-button faintly discernible on the farther wall.