Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/260

 "There's a lot of use in it. They tell me this ain't a good country for bigamists. Mebbe it ain't. But I know that wit' things as they are it's an awful unhealthy climate for spy-work!"

Shindler stood eying her for several moments of utter silence.

"What do you want, any way?" he finally demanded.

"I wantta know just what yuh're goin' to do about it!"

The man in the "blinkers" sat down in the chair beside the many-stained table on which stood a crockery ash-receiver, a highly lithographed tray advertising a German beer, and a melancholy plaster-of-Paris statuette of Columbus without a head.

"What are you goin' to do about it?" Shindler inquired. Behind his beguiling air of pensiveness, by this time, was the craftiness of the professional criminal declining to be cornered.

Sadie Wimpel also sat down. Shindler, she knew, was not so guileless an enemy as he appeared. And she was equally aware of the fact that her steps would have to be picked with caution.

"What's your graft these days?" she calmly inquired.