Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/69

 "Sailors?" snapped out Wilsnach.

Sadie dashed his hopes. "They was soused to the gills—worse'n the sash and door guy! They was so lit up I short-changed 'em a couple o' bones, jus' for squeezin' me hand durin' business hours!"

"There doesn't seem to be much for us to work on in that group," meditated Wilsnach, after a moment or two of silence.

"What I wantta know," demanded Sadie, fixing him with a rebellious eye, "is jus' why I'm planted here, and jus' what good I'm doin' at this palm-readin' guff!"

"There's a reason for it, Sadie, and the reason is this: We've got to rake this big city for a man named Dorgan. We don't know where he is, or where he's headed for. All we know is that he's hidden away somewhere in New York."

"But where d'where'd [sic] I come in?" demanded the seeress.

"You come in as the decoy-duck who's going to persuade the gun-shy stranger to dip down into your neighborhood. For before this man came to our city, Kestner tells me, he'd been consulting a fortune-teller named Madame Fatichiara."

"Then I ain't the one and only?" demanded Sadie Wimpel, with a distinct note of disappointment.