Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/209

 "Who is that?" again demanded Kestner as he lifted his revolver from its pocket.

Still she did not answer him. But a look of mute protest leaped into her eyes as she saw his fire-arm.

"Wait," she implored in a whisper. She gave him the impression of being afraid to speak. But her eyes seemed to appeal to him for help, touched with the pathos of an animal to whom the power of speech has not been given. And for a moment, in the teeth of the odds that were against her, he believed in her.

"Wait," she whispered again as she pointed towards the door of the dingy little bedroom behind him. He understood her gesture. But for a moment he hesitated, staring down into her face. It was quite colourless, by this time, and oddly twisted, as a child's face is sometimes contorted with pain. But her hand was still stretched half-imploringly towards that dingy room in the rear.

Then, as the knock was repeated, he stepped silently back through that second door, with his hat in one hand and his revolver in another. Then he quietly closed the door and secured it by the heavy brass bolt which he found on the inside. At the same moment he heard the rustle of her skirts and the sound of a key being turned in the lock. He had no time to deliberate on the fact that she had locked him in the room where he stood, for in the next breath he could hear the sound of her voice, addressed to the impatient knocker at the outer door.

"Just a moment," she called out with a slightly rising inflection which gave a note of casualness to her cry. And Kestner, crouching behind that inner door,