Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/307

 "And how did you know that?" Kestner inquired.

She laughed as she tucked her veil up about her modish little hat.

"Hully gee, there's things we've gotta know!"

"So I surmise!"

"An' I was wise to you droppin' out, or I wouldn't be here!"

"Then why are you here?" demanded Kestner.

Sadie Wimpel stepped to the middle of the room. She eyed him as she advanced, as though some dregs of her former fear of him still troubled her mind. Her face had grown quite sober, touched with a determination which Kestner had never before seen on it.

"I'm lookin' for a life line!" she calmly announced.

Kestner motioned her into a chair.

"In trouble?" he queried.

"Do I look it?" she demanded, with an appreciative glance down her own shimmering façade.

"Not altogether!" he acknowledged with the ghost of a smile. "But what's the line for?"

"For some one you've gotta help!"

"But who?"

Sadie, with a rustle of silk, condescended to seat herself.

"You've been trailin' Maura Lambert f'r the last six or seven mont's," she reminded him.

"How do you know that?" promptly inquired Kestner. But his pulse quickened at the mere mention of the name.

"Oh, I'm hep to that, an' consid'r'ble more. But before I switch to that I wantta put you wise to the