Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/95

 She spoke demurely and looked down at her handbag with an expectant smile. Then she deferentially stood up as she opened this bag, groping down into it with fingers which did not at once find the papers she seemed to be looking for.

"How'd this do?" she casually inquired.

She stepped demurely forward, until her coat-edge brushed against the top of the walnut table itself.

Keudell looked at her half-raised hand both a little scornfully and a little heavily. He did not move as his vision focused on that outstretched hand, but the pupils of his pale eyes, converging in a stare that retained none of their former indifference, grew suddenly darker in tone. The rabbit-like pinkness of his many-scarred cheeks also deepened, here and there, until the skin was fantastically blotched with brick-red splashes of color.

He found himself staring into the barrel-end of a most formidable-looking revolver. And the hand that held it, he was not slow to notice, was remarkably steady. Yet he faced it without any apparent flinching of his huge body. He even seemed too preoccupied with his predicament to lift his eyes from that unwavering barrel-end to the woman's angry face.