Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/272

 Kestner knew was that the other man was there, between the same imprisoning walls as himself, waiting, watching, motionless, confronting him with a stoic campaign of inactivity, an ordeal of suspended action.

That suspension of action was even harder on Kestner than on his enemy, for Lambert was inured to the periodic quiescence of the fugitive. He had always faced danger, as an outlaw, and under the strain and stress of undefined pursuers had acquired fortitude. As a criminal he had always been surrounded by some vague and unknown menace, never knowing from what quarter the arm of the law might suddenly reach. And he had adjusted himself to these indeterminate apprehensions. He had grown reconciled to the tedium of prolonged concealment.

But with Kestner it was different. As an officer of constituted authority he had been taught to move promptly and to act decisively. He had always been the aggressor, the pursuer. His nerves were the nerves of the beagle. He had always run with the hounds. He had never been schooled in this rabbit- like trick of skulking motionless in protective shadows. He hated the dark. And it was beginning to tell on him.

He wondered how much longer it would have to last. The quietness seemed to manacle him, limb by limb. He had never dreamed that silence could become such a torture. He knew that sound would spell peril, and yet he prayed for sound in some form or another. He knew that somewhere in the neighbourhood, lonely as it was along that South Brooklyn