Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/258

 raised one hand, as though to run it through his disordered and grotesquely thinning cow-lick. But the movement was arrested in mid-air.

"For the love o' Gawd!" he slowly ejaculated.

Sadie viewed him with apparent unconcern.

"Don't let me butt in on your unpackin'!" she smilingly announced.

He stood still staring at her. Astonishment such as his could not be swallowed whole.

"I thought—thought you were in Budapest!" was his plainly inadequate exclamation.

Sadie's lip curled with scorn.

"Yuh mean yuh left me there!" she amended.

His mildly abstracted eyes took on a look of trouble.

"I had the chance of beatin' it or bein' gathered in. So naturally I beat it."

"That's what most yella dawgs 'd do!"

She could see the habitually mild eyes harden a little.

"That's a hell of a way to talk to your husband!"

Sadie stood for a second or two with her eyes closed, as though her body had sustained a blow which bewildered even her mind.

"Well, yuh suttinly were that partic'lar kind of