Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/243

Rh to him, even though I was beginning to ask myself just how much longer I could keep those automatics poked in their faces.

His own face suddenly grew serious.

"And the valuables you carried away from this house in that bag, I trust, are still in that bag!" he suddenly flung out at me.

It was more a reminder, I think, than either a challenge or a question. My first impulse was to resent it. But it was really meant to serve, I began to see, as a tip on the wing. It indirectly warned me that the matter of the club-bag had passed completely out of my mind.

I remembered, with a sinking feeling, that this precious bag had been dropped out through the portières. And it was not the sort of thing one wanted to leave lying about in the dark on the far side of a door.

At the same moment that this fact came home to me I began backing away from that ragged line of captives, edging always toward those heavy portières that swung between me and the next room.

A couple of the figures in that line, I noticed, exchanged glances. It was a signal which might have meant anything. But I knew better than to take chances. And it pulled me up short.