Page:Frank Spearman--Whispering Smith.djvu/141

 you to pay it. Will you have a care for yourself, Gordon?”

“Will you?”

“Yes.”

“You need never ask me to be careful,” Smith went on. “That is my business. I asked you to watch your window-shades at night, and when I came in just now I found one up. It is you who are likely to forget, and in this kind of a game a man never forgets but once. I’ll lie down on the Lincoln lounge, George.”

“Get into the bed.”

“No; I like the lounge, and I’m off early.”

In the private room of the superintendent, provided as a sleeping apartment in the old headquarters building many years before hotel facilities reached Medicine Bend, stood the only curio the Wickiup possessed—the Lincoln lounge. When the car that carried the remains of Abraham Lincoln from Washington to Springfield was dismantled, the Wickiup fell heir to one piece of its elaborate furnishings, the lounge, and the lounge still remains as an early-day relic. Whispering Smith walked into the bedroom and disposed himself in an incredibly short time. “I’ve borrowed one of your pillows, George,” he called out presently.

“Take both.” 119