Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/186

 "Miyako! Put on the lights. Then open the front door for this gentleman! And open it wide!"

He was no longer a ludicrous and watery-eyed invertebrate; he was a quick-witted and hornet-like figure hot with the fires of a vast indignation. He swung about and faced the quietly smiling Kestner.

"Have you anything more to say?"

"Just one thing," said Kestner, addressing himself to the girl at the end of the oak table. "And that is, my dear, to warn you that you've hitched your wagon to a star that never came out of the Saginaw valley! Your uncle is Wallaby Sam, who eleven years ago came out of an Australian penal colony and as Gustav Korff stole war-secrets for certain German military attachés. Three years later, a Baron Piozzo was arrested at Boden, a Swedish fortification on the Russian frontier, for selling military maps to Petrograd agents. That Baron was your uncle here! Two years later he was rounded up in Budapest, at the same game, only this time he was operating with a woman he had especially trained for that work. And if you stay with him you'll do more than brush the cigar-ashes off his vest-front and feed the gold-fish, because he wants you for one thing, and only one thing. Inside of two months he'll have you gay-catting for him, the same as he had that Polish countess who didn't happen to be born in Saginaw, Michigan!"

Kestner, as he paused for breath, fell back a step or two, until he stood in the open door. "And I guess that's about all!"

The hornet-like figure was no longer looking at him. The man in the cherry-coloured gown had turned