Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/179

 door being opened. Then came the sound of voices, thin and faraway, from an inner room, the dim echo of a girl's laugh, an answering more guttural laugh, and then the soft thud of a closing door again.

Kestner tiptoed back to the safe, closed the steel door, restored the imitation velour drapery to its place, and started cautiously up the stairs. He moved quietly but quickly, taking the turn to the right as the girl had done. He did not come to a stop until he had passed a portière and found himself in utter darkness, a little puzzled as to which way to proceed.

As he stood there in doubt, he heard the thin sound of voices again. Then he made still another discovery. For several seconds he had remained stationary, puzzled by the faint aroma which filled the darkness about him, assailing his memory with some ghostly association which eluded explanation. Then, of a sudden, it came home to him. That indeterminate reminder of the past arose from nothing more nor less than a Russian cigarette. It was a fragrance that took him at a bound back to Newskii Prospekt and the Moika, to Contant's and Pivato's and to Mavritania [sic] and Moscow and the coffee-houses of Kherson on those hot August nights when certain Asiatic fortress-plans had been lost and in the end found again.

Kestner knew that he was sniffing a cigarette which had been bought and made in Russia. And the thin and exotic odour of that tobacco suddenly stirred him beyond reason, disturbed him more than he would have been willing to acknowledge.

He stepped gropingly toward the door from which