Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/306

288 The thought of that unknown woman, however, did not stay long in my head. For the door, swinging still wider, had allowed that unseen interloper to pass into the room itself. My gaze was still directed on Wendy Washburn's face. I did not actually look away from him. Yet somewhere on the vague borders of vision I received an impression of a moving shadow. I knew that some one had opened the door, had silently entered the room, and was advancing across the floor.

Wendy Washburn was speaking again, but I had no idea what he was saying. His words became a meaningless jumble of sound, and I lost all thought of him, as that advancing shadow moved more directly into my line of vision.

My first shock came, as I slowly raised my eyes, when I discovered the intruder was not a woman. My second shock came when I realized that this intruder carried a blue-barreled automatic in his right hand. But the third shock, and the greatest of them all, came when I saw that this intruder was a man whom I had been taught to think of as dead.

For standing before me I saw, not a ghost of Bud Griswold, but Bud Griswold himself. Bud in the flesh. Bud with the prison-pallor still on his gaunt face, Bud clad in soiled linen and ill-kempt clothing,