Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/80

 "Yuh've gotta have nerve," conceded Sadie, "when yuh're scratchin' for yourself!"

"It ain't always easy scratching, is it?" he inquired, with a note of newly awakened hope in his voice.

"Not by a long shot!" Her companion still hesitated. "Maybe I could make it easier for you," he finally suggested, though it took an effort for him to say the words.

"How?" languidly inquired the woman.

"I'll tell you that in about ten minutes' time." Then he added, in audible afterthought, "I guess I'm kind of up against it myself!"

He said no more, for the cab had stopped before a sinister-looking brownstone-fronted house with curtained windows and an iron-grilled door.

Sadie did not altogether like the appearance of that house. It looked like a place, she promptly concluded, where anything might happen. But she gave no sign of her secret misgivings.

"So here's where we wade in?" was her careless chirp as she stepped from the cab and followed the stranger up the brownstone steps, swinging her hand-bag as she went.

She watched him as he rang the bell, noting the