Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/134

 Kestner felt reasonably sure that this third person could be no one but Maura Lambert.

He had scarcely time to digest this discovery before he became aware of the fact that Morello himself had suddenly and noiselessly sidled in through the partly opened door. Kestner waited, breathless, for some cry of alarm at that sudden invasion, or for at least the quick give and take of angry voices. But no sound came to him.

He waited for a moment or two and then the suspense became more than he cared to endure. He crept up the rest of the stairway and circled about to the partly opened door. Then he stooped forward and peered into the room.

In front of a dressing-table surmounted by a three-panelled mirror he could plainly see Maura Lambert. She was seated there in the full light of the two electric-globes on either side of her mirror. She wore a loose-sleeved dressing-gown of rose-coloured silk, open at the throat. Her hair was down, and in her right hand she held a silver-backed brush. She was not, at the moment, making use of this brush. She was leaning forward a little, staring absently into the middle panel of her looking-glass.

Kestner could see both the clear-cut profile and the reflected image of her in the mirror. He could see the ivory whiteness of the rounded throat, the shimmer of the heavy cascade of loosened hair, the soft line of one relaxed arm, almost white against the rose-colour of her gown. And more than ever before a wayward impression of her sheer physical beauty swept over him.

It was the first time he had ever seen her in a moment