Page:Jackson Gregory--joyous trouble maker.djvu/112

96 "Rather it would seem, Mr. Steele," he said, lifting his hat to run a handkerchief across his brow, "that I am the discoverer. I find you here where, it appears, you have no business to be." Steele's lungs swelled perceptibly to a deep breath. Slowly, as he expelled it, the rigidity of his frame relaxed.

"It's well to know when a rattlesnake is around," he said carelessly. "I wouldn't have thought, though, that you'd have quite had the nerve to go out of your way to look me up, Joe." "Miss Corliss has ordered you off her property," returned Embry equably. "Since your latest game seems to be picking out a girl to persecute it is perhaps only natural that a friend of Miss Corliss' should go out of his way to look you up."

Steele's brows bunched up ominously, throwing his eyes into shadows.

"Out after big game, as usual, I see," he grunted. "You … Miss Corliss!"

He flung about, confronting her now, his eyes blazing.

"You take a tip from me and watch every little play Joe Embry makes," he cried warmly. "I don't know what he's up to this trip, but I do know him to the bottom of his crooked heart. He's a damned low down contemptible cur!"

These words to Beatrice Corliss, spoken in her presence, of a friend of hers! And yet the amazing thing is that for a breathless moment she was caught high upon a tide of uncertainty, swept away from all solid footing upon surety, dazed and bewildered. Only yesterday