Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/269



knew it was not yet morning. He also knew that he had not as yet captured Lambert.

There were still other things which he knew, and one of them was the need for silence. He was only too keenly alive to the danger, in that strange place, of the slightest sound. There might be peril in the minutest audible movement.

Yet sound seemed the one thing for which his over-tensioned nerves were clamoring. And the one relief which his aching muscles demanded was movement, free and abandoned movement. Yet he dare not so much as lift his rib-cage and enjoy the luxury of a good sigh.

That misery of mind and body would have been less acute had there been some glimmer of light, however microscopic. The unbroken darkness had become inquisitional. It kept imparting to him the impression of being disembodied, of floating ghost-like between heaven and earth, of crouching poised at the lonely centre of some lonely etheric waste. He felt lonesome. And he wished he could smoke.

The darkness that encompassed Kestner was like a covering of muffling black velvet. It was a blanketing opaqueness that seemed to shut off the very air from his lungs. It seemed something more than a mere negation of light, something and