Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/271

 not ordained that they should fight. For something had made Lambert suspicious. He had grown as silent as a hunted animal assured of the adequacy of its shelter. He had converted that interminable night into a duel of silences. He had suddenly lapsed into utter stillness,—and for a stillness so heroically maintained, Kestner knew, there must indeed be an ample reason. It was an unending Waterloo of waiting, and it had not been engineered without cause.

Once, as Kestner thought this over, the chill of the night air brought a tickle to his nostrils, and he had to put a finger over his upper lip, pressing it tight against his teeth, to stop the sneeze which threatened to shake his body and fling an explosion of sound across the darkness.

This brought a fresh terror to Kestner's already harassed mind. A mere cough could be his undoing; one uncontrolled spasm of the body could crown his night's work with ignominious defeat. One telltale sound would verify Lambert's suspicions. And Lambert must have nursed these suspicions. For it was plain that something had happened. Something had occurred to disturb his enemy's peace of mind, to shake his confidence, to put a stop to his raid on the olive-oil tins in which the counterfeit paper from the Palermo plant was so cunningly sealed.

Lambert, his pursuer acknowledged, might be even closer to him than he imagined. The counterfeiter might be within a dozen feet of him. He might be even closer. Kestner might reach out a hand and suddenly find his waiting enemy within touch. Nothing could be certain, in that engulfing darkness. All