Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/346

 "And what must you do?" asked the girl, studying the woman on the bed with interested but still uncompromising eyes.

"I gotta stay buried!"

She smiled at the girl's returning look of alarm. "I gotta stay buried in this hotel until four or five o' the biggest crooks that ever wore shoe-leather sneak into this town for a secret conference."

"That sounds like moving pictures," said the young nurse, with her contemplative eyes still skeptical.

"It's got movin' pictures stung to death, for that bunch is so bad they daren't all get into one town, in our country, without bein' smelt out. So they've had to beat it up across the border, some from the East and some from the West. And I've had the straight tip that they're goin' to meet here, right here in this hotel. As I say, they were leery o' bunchin' up anywheres in the States. And little Sadie is goin' to gather 'em all in. She's goin' to do it with her little hatchet, first crack out o' the box. And when Wilson and Daniels and the other big guns are gerry to what I've done they're goin' to melt down enough bar gold to strike me off a Service medal the size of a soup-plate!"