Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/82

 break in the steely enmity of the servant's steely eyes.

"The boss is busy," he curtly announced.

"Well, he's expecting me," confidentially announced the caller.

"Both of you?" inquired the man inside the door, apparently without so much as a direct look at the woman with the carelessly swinging hand-bag.

"Yes, I guess we'll both come in." The words were spoken casually. But for all their quietness they seemed to carry the weight of an ultimatum.

The large-boned man at the door hesitated for one moment. Then he stepped back, watched the two visitors pass into the hallway and carefully and quietly closed the heavy door behind them.

"That's Canby," whispered Dorgan out of one corner of his mouth.

"Ain't he the sour old thing?" remarked Sadie Wimpel aloud.

To that alert-eyed young woman there seemed something ominous in the snap of the closing door's lock-bar. It seemed like the spring of a trap which might be cutting off all retreat. There was something dungeon-like in its very noisiness.

Her step, however, did not lose any of its