Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/161



did not wait for more. He did not even take time to stow away his dry-cell and his dictophone wires. He merely dropped them beside the back wall of the room, pushed an arm chair over the litter to hide it from the casual eye, and made a dive for his hat and coat.

He was through the door and down the corridor before the elevator boy who had stopped at his floor could slam shut the iron grill and continue his downward flight.

By the time Kestner had reached the street, he had quite recovered his breath and composure, assured of the fact that the woman he wanted had not preceded him. So he lighted a cigar and stood back in the shelter of the carriage starter's box. His wait was not a long one.

His first impression, as he watched Sadie Wimpel alias Francine Florette step to her waiting taxicab door, was that the lady in question seemed very debonair as to manner and very resplendent as to attire. His next impression, as she turned to give a word of direction to her driver, was that she was a valuable woman for the work she had elected to follow, a woman of quick wit and pert manners, touched with both audacity and the love of adventure, as unconscious of any complicating moral-code as were the birds of the air,