Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/211



was by no means a feeling of fear that surged through the man imprisoned in that squalid inner room of the Alambo, as he heard the voice of his old-time enemy. It was more an incongruous feeling of deliverance, of relief at the thought that Maura Lambert had not as yet betrayed him. Then he stood again listening, for the sound of voices was once more coming from the outer room.

"How dare you come here?" he could hear the woman demand.

He could hear Morello's repeated laugh of mockery, and then the sound of the Neapolitan's voice. It was a voice to which little of its native colouring still clung, for as Kestner had so often remarked, many years in America had robbed his speech of its idiom, and his vocation as a criminal had further imposed on him the necessity of denationalisation.

"I can come anywhere now," was Morello's careless answer. There was an audacity in that declaration which seemed new to the man: it was not without its effect on the woman confronting him.

"But what right have you to come here?" she repeated in a voice which quavered a little, in spite of herself.

From some apartment nearby the strident notes