Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/151

 "But why have you kept us waiting and worrying so long?" asked the more solemn voice.

"Ain't a girl like me gotta look out for herself? Ain't I hep to what's goin' to happen to this gang?"

"Nothing can happen to this gang, Sadie, so long as we stick together!" was the answer.

"Can't it? With that sleepy-eyed slooth fr'm over the water doggin' us ev'ry step we take! Oh, I see the Gov'nor's finish, an' I see it close! Why, I can't slide into a pool-room an' lay a bet without havin' some one lookin' over me shoulder an' countin' me change! An' this shadow business is sure givin' me the Willies! Doggone it, I want somethin' I can freeze onto, this time. I've always been fooled. That Count dub I married in Monte Carlo turned out to be a bank-sneak. That Hinkle man I loved like a father was nothing but a mail-pouch thief lookin' for a capper. That American photographer who wanted me to hit the state-fair circuits with him had cooked up a panel-game so's I could go through a haytosser's clothes while he took his photograph in a cow-boy rig-out! They was grafters, dearie, ev'ry last one o' them, an' I was hungerin' for a Harlem flat and the simple life!"

"Then what do you intend to do?" asked the deeper voice, none too sympathetically.

"Why, I inten' to cotton to that bunch o' rhino an' make hay while the sun shines! D'ye get me? I've got a cherub-faced old guy from Saginaw, who's made a million out o' Michigan lumber an' never learnt how to spend it. I'm going to kindergarten him into the trick o' movin' through the white lights! I'm goin'