Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/53

 Wilsnach, with his heart in his mouth, ran across the room and darted in through the half-open door.

In the center of the bedroom he saw an ivory-skinned woman in an evening-gown, with a smoking revolver in her hand. Stretched out on the floor lay the figure of a man. Beside him, on the polished hardwood floor, glistened a small pool of blood. And Wilsnach's first glance told him this was the same man who had stooped over him as he lay in his loggia chair.

The next moment Wilsnach was at the telephone. "Send the house doctor to Madame Garnier's rooms at once. At once, please, for it's an emergency case."

Then he called over the wire: "Give me room four hundred and twenty-seven." Frantically as Wilsnach called room four hundred and twenty-seven, he could get no response there from Kestner. And now, of all times, he wanted the guidance and help of his older colleague. For he was in the midst of a tangle that he could not quite comprehend.

"If this is known," still sobbed the woman, "everything will be lost."

Wilsnach stood regarding the tumbled mass of her dusky hair. He stared at it a little vacantly, as