Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/382

 of a melodrama. Keudell could see the thin cloud of smoke drift across the dial-face, for a moment obscuring the figures. But he realized, as he watched, that those figures were contending with other figures, that a circle of men with poised revolvers were closing in about his four startled colleagues, that Heinold, who tried to break through this agitated yet constricting circle, was clubbed back and clapped into handcuffs the moment he fell sprawling across the table-legs.

Keudell did not fail to comprehend the final meaning of that spectacle. It meant defeat and capture for the men on whom he had depended. It meant the end of everything. But in comprehending this there was one thing that escaped his attention.

That was the movement of Sadie Wimpel, who had sat bent forward in her chair, with her earnest eyes on his face as he advanced into the room. It was as his own eyes widened with wonder at the pantoscopic vision confronting him from the illuminated dial that Sadie, in the shadowy background, slipped from her chair, bending low like a track runner awaiting the starting signal, with the tips of her fingers almost touching the carpeted