Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/273

 waterfront, there must be companionable little noises, the whisper of the tide running between the piles under the wharf, far-off ferry-engines churning from the Battery to Staten Island, steel shovels clanging deep in the stoke-holes of rusty freighters lying at their slips. Across that distant cobweb of steel known as Brooklyn Bridge, he remembered electric trains were roaring and surface cars were clattering. Above that huddled island of unrest, beyond the bridge again, where even midnight could not fix the seal of silence, must swarm a multitudinous crown of noises, like bees above a hive. But none of these came to that locked and shuttered wharf-shed along a lonely and sleep-wrapped waterfront where Lambert and the man who sought him were prisoners.

Kestner fell to wondering how many hours they had been shut in there together, and how much longer the darkness would last. He had no means of judging the time. He dramatized the coming of morning, picturing to himself the first faint inkling of the first faint glimmer of grey. He could imagine the anxiety with which that vague glimmer would be watched, the tensity with which he and his enemy would peer at each other through the slowly lifting translucent veil, the breathlessness with which the first actual light would be welcomed, the suddenness with which the inevitable encounter would then begin.

That encounter, he knew, was bound to take place. LLambert, after that night, could never get away. Lambert, indeed, could have no immediate wish to get away. That counterfeiter, without scratcher or breaker or colleague left, would never think of fleeing