Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/212

 of a piano struck up, as a vaudeville team settled down to determined rehearsals of an undetermined ragtime hit. Over and over the syncopated music was repeated, providing a raucous and ceaseless accompaniment for the dialogue taking place in Number Seventeen. That tumult of sound compelled Kestner to place his ear flat against the panel of the intervening door, that none of the talk might escape him in the general din.

"What right have you to keep me out?" he could hear Morello demand. And again there was the sound of the full-throated laugh, but this time it was quite without mirth.

"You have been drinking!" proclaimed the accusatory voice of the woman.

"Have I?" was the heavy retort of her tormentor. It was plain that he had stepped closer to her. "And what if I have? When I want a thing, I get it."

"Tony!" cried the reed-like voice of the other, in sharp command.

"Bah!" cried back the scoffing voice. "Do not talk to me as though I were a child. The time for that is over!"

"And the time for this sort of nonsense is over," countered the woman. She had backed away from him, apparently, and was standing quite close to the bedroom door. Kestner, in the brief lapse of silence that followed, could catch the sound of her breathing. Then the neighbouring piano struck up a louder tumult and he could hear only Morello's voice again. "Do you think you can get away from me?" the Neapolitan was saying. "No, signorita, it is too late