Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/93

 She walked slowly and sullenly ahead of him until he came to a door at the back of a hallway. This door he opened, and waited for her to pass inside. She was disturbed by his calmness. She was further disturbed by the fact that his glance never once left her. And there were certain eventualities for which she wished to be prepared.

"Sit down," he suavely commanded.

Keudell himself, she noticed, took a chair behind a walnut library-table on which stood a desk-telephone and a green-shaded electric reading-lamp. Diffident as was his pose, she chafed under the consciousness of his unparaded power. Behind all his apparent urbanity, she very well knew, was a malice which might at any moment break out.

She started visibly when the call-bell of the desk-phone suddenly rang. She wondered how long it would be before the claws showed through the velvet.

Yet Keudell, as he answered that call, did so with affected unconcern, languidly placing the receiver against a pink and partly inclined ear. He even listened with the faint shadow of a smile on his lips.

Sadie Wimpel sat watching him, wondering why he made her think of a razor-blade wrapped in