Page:Arthur Stringer - The Shadow.djvu/26

 "Yes?" she answered cautiously, watching herself as carefully as an actress with a rôle to sustain, a rôle in which she could never be quite letter-perfect.

"It 's Connie Binhart," cut out the Second Deputy.

He could see discretion drop like a curtain across her watching face.

"Connie Binhart!" she temporized. Blake, as his heavy side glance slewed about to her, prided himself on the fact that he could see through her pretenses. At any other time he would have thrown open the flood-gates of that ever-inundating anger of his and swept away all such obliquities.

"I guess," he went on with slow patience, "we know him best round here as Charles Blanchard."

"Blanchard?" she echoed.

"Yes, Blanchard, the Blanchard we 've been looking for, for seven months now, the Blanchard who chloroformed Ezra Newcomb and carried off a hundred and eighteen thousand dollars."