Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/305

 Time, Sadie felt, was an asset to her. She no longer stood alone. She was part of a complex mechanism which her absence would disturb, as a slipped cog disrupts a machine. Already, she felt, the word had gone out and the search was under way. So her first duty now was to fence for time.

"Then what's the use o' talkin' about it?" was her nonchalant retort to Keudell's threat.

"But you are going to talk about it!"

"Am I?"

"You are going to say, first, where this man Kestner is, and where the papers you stole are, and then what became of the blue-prints you tricked out of Dorgan. And you are going to say it before you see God's sunshine again!"

Sadie's passivity suddenly dropped from her. Fixed as may have been her purpose, her mind, in the final analysis, was still an untutored one. And anger possessed her.

"Say, yuh can't pull that movie stuff on me!" she cried back at him. "I'm not the goat in this deal. And what's more, yuh guys can't throw a scare into me, either! Yuh may as well get wise to that! Get it—and get it good! This is the third time yuh've tried to put over the rough-neck