Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/386

 arm as he brought the night-stick down for the second time, this time flat against Keudell's pink-fleshed skull. The sound was not a pleasant one, but all thought of it was swept away by the dull glory of the knowledge that Keudell had fallen, that he was on the floor, prostrate, grotesquely huddled, so pathetically inert that without movement or protest he could be jerked over on his back and a pair of handcuffs could be snapped clicking over his great wrists.

Yet her triumph seemed overshadowed by a vague worry which she could not define, a worry keen but incomprehensible, which brought her appealing eyes back to Wilsnach's face.

"This woman's shot!" she heard him call out in a voice husky with alarm.

She was about to contradict this, and contradict it with vigor, when she found that the words seemed unwilling to frame themselves for utterance. She also found, to her mild surprise, that Wilsnach was holding her up with one arm about her waist.

The sudden perplexity of her helplessness brought her studious eyes once more back to Wilsnach's face. Into those eyes crept a plaintive wonder, a dumb and animal-like questioning, an unspoken imploring