Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/297

 more than some powdered tobacco leaves. He thought next of the telephone. But he decided to recover his lost revolver first,—and also his shoes, for his feet were bruised and sore. Yet he relished least of all the thought of being there without a gun.

He groped weakly about, trying to strike matches on his moist trouser-leg. When he came to an open crate of olive-oil tins he sat down. He concluded it would be best to rest there for a moment or two, for he felt light-headed, impressed with the idea that the oak-flooring under him was gently but perceptibly oscillating, heaving back and forth with wave-like regularity. He laughed a little as he leaned forward and turned one of the olive-oil tins over and over in his hands. Then he was dimly conscious of the doors at the wharf-end being swung open, of hurrying figures with lanterns, of the lightening greyness of the world beyond the wide maw of the door, of the call of voices through the cavernous gloom of the wharf-shed itself.

He leaned back against the crate, wishing he had a drink of water. But he did not forget that Lambert was safely locked in the little iron-clad storage-room next to the pier-office.

"Are you all right now?" Wilsnach was asking as he handed a pocket-flask back to a second stooping figure beside him.

"I'm all right," was Kestner's slowly articulated answer, after blinking for a moment or two up into the face of the ever-dependable Wilsnach. He stared about him for another moment or two. Then he remembered.