Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/248

 Coke pondered that question for several moments. There was an air or determined authority about Sadie Wimpel which rather disquieted him.

"Down to Nitro Charlie's," he finally admitted.

"What was he cookin' up?"

Coke's eyes fluttered.

"How t'ell should I know?"

"Yuh gotta know," was Sadie's quiet response.

Coke passed a second measuring glance over her trimly clad body.

"Why?"

"Because I'm stoolin' for a Fed guy, this week. And I don't wantta have to dig up nothin' against yuh. Coke! What was Shindler cookin' up?"

Their studiously contending glances came together like aerial scouts above masked batteries. Behind his enemy's entrenchments, Coke conceded, might be reserves which it would be foolish to oppose.

"Him and Charlie hit on a plan o' squeezin' a bunch out of a German gunpowder man called Piorkowski. It was some plant, for Charlie'd pinched a river-launch full o' new smokeless from the naval magazine up to Iona Island. It was a Navy officer's patent and was bein' stored there to ripen for a mont' or two."