man in tweeds filed the doorway—a ruddy-faced man of thirty-five or so, whose appearance of athletic blond wholesomeness was marred by close-set eyes of an indistinct blue.
Seeing me, he stopped—a step inside the room.
“Hello, Stan!” the girl said lightly. “This gentleman is from the Continental Detective Agency. I’ve just emptied myself to him about Bernie. Tried to stall him at first, but it was no good.”
The man’s vague eyes switched back and forth between the girl and me. Around the pale irises his eyeballs were pink.
He straightened his shoulders and smiled too jovially.
“And what conclusion have you come to?” he inquired.
The girl answered for me.
“I’ve already had my invitation to take a ride.”
Tennant bent forward. With an unbroken swing of his arms, he swept a chair up from the floor into my face. Not much force behind it, but quick.
I went back against the wall, fending of the chair with both arms—threw it aside—and looked into the muzzle of a nickeled revolver.
A table drawer stood open—the drawer from which he had grabbed the gun while I was busy with the chair. The revolver, I noticed, was of .38 caliber.
“Now,” his voice was thick, like a drunk’s, “turn around.”
I turned my back to him, felt a hand moving over my body, and my gun was taken away.