Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/45

 Wilsnach, for all the byplay with those about him, studied her closely, but not so closely as he studied the face of the man with her.

"I call that an uncommonly beautiful woman," ventured the light-hearted Wilsnach to the officer on his right as he glanced toward the small table to which a silver cooler filled with chopped ice had just been brought. "Who is she?"

"That's Madame Garnier," answered the man on Wilsnach's right.

"Then not an American?"

"No; she's merely spending the winter here."

"But why here?" blithely persisted Wilsnach.

"She's rather interested in aviation. They say her husband is Garnier, the French inventor who's getting out that gyroscopic stabilizer for air-craft. She's going to look after the government trials for him."

Yet as the talk at Wilsnach's crowded table grew louder, and the laughter more convivial, the shadowy-eyed woman with the orange opera-cloak looked more than once in the direction of the newly arrived Lieutenant Keays. From under her dark lashes, from time to time, she might even have been detected studying his well-tailored figure with a not