Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/121

Rh it's me you want to see. You'd better do your talkin' to my lawyer!"

"Ruby!" called the girl at the desk.

But the wire brought no answer to that repeated call, and Teddie hung up the receiver. She placed it slowly and carefully on its hook and sat staring at the cadmium tinted wall, with a look of helpless protest on her bewildered young face. And for the second time she found herself face to face with a forlorn and seemingly fruitless survey of her resources.

Once or twice, in her desperation, she was even tempted to pack up and scurry off to Hot Springs in the wake of her Uncle Chandler. But that, she remembered, would be more than cowardly. It would be foolish, for it would be nothing more than a momentary evasion of the inevitable. And besides being a sacrifice of dignity, it would stand as an advertisement of guilt.

Then out of a world that seemed as cold and empty as a glacial moraine came one faint glow of hope. On the gray sky-line