Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/234

 point of vantage he stared casually and dreamily about him.

He found himself confronted by a long and rather low-ceilinged room filled with the drifting fumes of gun-oil and tobacco and smokeless cartridges. Across the front of this room ran a counter, with a hinge-top at one end, and at the other an orderly row of waiting fire-arms.

Behind this counter stood an anæmic and sallow-faced youth of about twenty, languidly passing the blade of a broken-handled razor along the face of an oil-covered hone. About that youth Kestner could find little that was worthy of attention. But he let no movement of the sallow-faced boy escape him.

Beyond the counter-top were the targets, white-painted discs of metal, a row of clay pipes illuminated by unseen electric-bulbs, and a further row of diminutive white ducks which travelled on an endless chain across a dusky and well-devised background, a ceaseless, hurrying procession ceaselessly inviting the skill of the most casual visitor. A more remote target stood at the end of a galvanised iron tube, and along one side of this narrow tube ran a hemp rope connecting with a whitening brush on a pivot.

It was not until the two sea-faring youths put down their rifles, relighted their stogies, and wandered on to other diversions, that Kestner languidly rose from his chair and advanced to the gun-counter. As he did so the sallow-faced youth pulled the hemp rope and rewhitened the tunnel target, switched on the lights which illuminated his crowded parliament of targets, and went on with his honing.