Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/258

 "And after that what'll you do?"

"I shall live my own life, in my own way."

"How'll you live? And where'll you live?"

"That must be my own concern.… And I came to see Carlesi."

"Well, find him!" challenged the other, swept away by his anger.

Kestner suddenly held his breath, for he could hear the woman as she quickly crossed the room and tried the very door behind which he crouched. Then she went to the door of the printing-room. It too was locked. But she was not to be deterred by trivial obstacles or side-issues.

"What is behind those doors?" she demanded.

"Nothing," was Lambert's retort.

"Then why are they locked?"

Her opponent did not answer for a moment or two.

"Why ask me? Ask the man who owns them."

"Will you open those doors?"

There was a finality in that demand, a finality which seemed to compel her adversary to a still newer course of equivocation.

"How am I to open them?" he craftily inquired.

"Then I shall find some one who can."

Lambert must have intercepted her on the way to the street door.

"Would you be fool enough to bring a cop in here?" he cried out, and he was panting a little, either from the exertion of holding her or from the shock at the thought of her madness.

"Don't dare to touch me," she said to him, and