Page:Arthur Stringer - The Shadow.djvu/283

 fact, he could detect that familiar veiled wariness, that enigmatic and self-concealing cautiousness which had always had the power to touch him into a quick irritation.

"Mr. Blake, I believe," said Copeland, very quietly. He was in full evening dress. In one hand he held a silk hat and over one arm hung a black top-coat. He held himself in perfect control, in too perfect control, yet his thin face was almost ashen in color, almost the neutral-tinted gray of a battle-ship's side-plates. And when he spoke it was with the impersonal polite unction with which he might have addressed an utter stranger.

"You wished to see me!" he said, as his gaze fastened itself on Blake's figure. The fact that he remained standing imparted a tentativeness to the situation. Yet his eyes remained on Blake, studying him with the cold and mildly abstracted curiosity with which he might view a mummy in its case.

"I do!" said Blake, without rising from his chair.

"About what?" asked Copeland. There