Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/34

 beyond reason. It was so beyond reason that it brought a hundred unkenneled suspicions yelping and snapping about him. Things that once seemed accidental and trivial took on a new significance. He could carpenter inconsequentialities into dim and towering structures of intrigue. He was afraid of himself and his surroundings.

The woman must have seen this the very moment she locked her arms about his reluctant neck, for her face changed and hardened. Even before he saw that change, though, he was crowding and struggling and pulling away from her.

The entire situation was so unlooked-for, so startling, that no new turn of it could add to his sense of surprise. He was conscious of the fact that she was crying out, while she still clung to him, and that the cab had come to a sudden stop. He noticed a figure at the door and a man's huge hand dart in towards him as it swung open. And still again he heard her shriek of simulated fear. It might even have been anger—he was not sure; he could not fathom it all. But he felt, dimly, that he was being tricked into some thing beyond his understanding; that the whole thing was some sort of trap. He resented being clawed at; he resented the way in which the man at the cab door was dragging and pulling him