Page:Keeban (IA keeban00balm).pdf/266

 "Me," I said. "But you—you weren't so easy, were you?"

"Oh, I don't know," she temporized.

Queer—wasn't that—how she wanted to show consideration for me? "I should have told you," she blamed herself, "that they'd be watching the Sencort building, and when they bumped off just guinea pigs, they'd lay for who fooled 'em."

"I had a tip to skip out," I said. "But I didn't start in time. Where did they get you?"

Now she told me, "They took me out of my room by the back way."

I held to her but differently—oh, entirely differently—from my hold of her in that Sencort room. For I knew not only that she'd not been in that scheme, not only that she'd gone there to warn Teverson, as she said, but also I knew she'd nothing to do with that blow on my medulla oblongata at Cheron Street.

"Vine's doing this, I suppose," I whispered.

"Yes."

"He sent me both those telegrams?"

"No; only the second; I came on, as I wired you. He grabbed me when I arrived and threw you the second wire, I didn't see the street till he was through with you."