Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/298

 wall-paper. It was not large, and its furniture was both mean and meager. From this room, however, a door opened into a lighted room at the rear.

The smaller man stepped promptly in through this second door, leaving the girl still firmly held by his larger companion.

Sadie could hear a broken hum of voices, one more guttural than the others. It was the guttural voice, emerging louder and more authoritative than its rivals, which finally made itself heard.

"Then bring her in here!" this voice commanded.

Sadie, as she heard it, found the situation less mysterious but none the less menacing. For it was Keudell himself who had spoken. And the next moment she was being led into his presence.

Sadie blinked a little at the strong light with which she found herself suddenly confronted. But she blinked even more at the figures which she saw ranged before her. They made her think of a row of magistrates set up to intimidate a prisoner. For behind the long green-baize table which stood almost at the center of the room sat four men in four high-backed chairs.

Three of them she recognized at a glance. The