"Ma'am?"
"Whose lodge is this? Does it belong to Harrod Place?"
"We're h-hootch runners, Miss——" stammered Wier, mindful of
instructions, but making a poor business of deception; "— I and Hal
Smith, we run a `Easy One,' and we strip trout for a blind and sell to
Harrod Place — Hal and I——"
"Who is Hal Smith?" she asked.
"Ma'am?"
The girl's flower-blue eyes turned icy: "Who is the man who calls himself Hal Smith?" she repeated.
Wier looked at her, red and dumb.
"Is he a Trooper in plain clothes?" she demanded in a bitter voice. "Is he one of the Commissioner's spies? Are you one, too?"
Wier gazed miserably at her, unable to formulate a convincing lie.
She flushed swiftly as a terrible suspicion seized her: