Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/266

 sat regarding him, there came to her the impression that she had witnessed this scene before, or some scene mysteriously akin to it. Then through these mists, like sunlight through fog, came the key to the coincidence. It came with the thin remembrance of something she had not thought or heard of, for several long years. It was some ghostly memory of a ghostly rumor that Shindler's ring was a "trick" ring. Once, when happy with heroin, he had explained its theft from the mistress of a murdered coke-snuffer in Bourdeaux. And he had boasted that inside its tiny sliding panel was ample space for enough chloral hydrate for a knock-out.

Shindler laughed a little as he turned toward the table. But Sadie was so keenly alert that her nerve-ends began to tingle.

"So that's how the land lies!" he said, as he slowly proceeded to fill the two empty glasses. Sadie watched him from under her demurely drooping eyelids. Adeptly as the move was made, she had the satisfaction of seeing the little cloud of whitish powder sift down into the second glass. The thought of his suave depravity sickened her. But she was determined to act out her part.

He shrugged as he handed her the glass, though