“I’m going to take my usual constitutional, sir,” she announced, “and I thought, if you had no objection, that I would take Prince with me. He’s been shut up in the kennel most of the time since you went away, and what he really needs is a good run.”
Just then the detective’s famous police dog pushed past the housekeeper’s skirts, and pattered into the study at the end of the leash which Mrs. Peters held.
The animal started eagerly for his master, as if surprised to find him there. Suddenly, however, he halted, the hair along his back raised in a bristling line, and an unmistakable snarl escaped him.
“Good boy! Good old Prince!” Gordon said, in a wheedling tone, but he had turned pale, and his eyes were very ugly. “Take him by all means, Mrs. Peters. His confinement doesn’t seem to have improved his temper—and I’m busy.”
But the housekeeper was staring from Prince to the man she believed to be her employer.
“Well, I never expected to see anything like that!” she ejaculated wonderingly. “Don’t you know your own master, Prince? What’s the matter with you, anyway? You are not going mad, are you?”
Green Eye’s hand had mechanically sought the pocket in which the automatic lay.
“Oh, it’s nothing like that,” he said, with assumed lightness. “The heat has put him a bit out of temper, that’s all. Take him away, and let him work off his grouch.”
Still looking very much bewildered, Mrs. Peters turned to go, but she had to drag the dog from the room by main force, and the more she pulled at the leash, the more he snarled.