Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/247

 when he had finished, could easily hide all signs of work.

But that work resulted in a quarter-inch crevice which commanded a reasonably clear view of the next room. And Kestner, leaning forward, could see the shock-headed dome of a middle-aged man at work above the hand press, picked out by the light from an unshaded electric bulb. On shelves beyond the press stood a litter of grey camp-blankets and waterproofs and wooden boxes that looked suspiciously like cases of ammunition. One corner of the room was piled high with larger boxes. A couple of these had been broken open, apparently for inspection. From the unsealed end of one protruded the stock of an army carbine.

Exceptional and significant as this merchandise appeared, it did not interest Kestner so much as did the man at work beside the press. He watched that man as he carefully re-inked his rollers and continued to feed in his sheets of cinnamon-brown bond paper, some eight or nine inches square. He watched the stooping-shouldered and swarthy-skinned worker as he held one of these squares up to the light, examined it with his squinting and red-rimmed eyes, and then proceeded to adjust a platen-shaft which seemed to be giving him trouble.

As the printer returned to his task of running his cinnamon-brown squares through the press Kestner awoke to a realisation of just what was taking place behind the closed door of that cellar work-room. Those sheets of tinted bond, the Secret Agent decided, could be used for just one purpose. He had surmised