Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/334

 and before you're taken back to Odessa to answer for the murder of Eichendorff a few others are going to know it! You're the cur who's low enough to steal a woman's keys and plant in her private desk a package of papers you thought would leave her in your power! You're the cowardly hound who tried to drag an honest woman into a life that was hateful to her, and you tried to do it by stealing Alfred Ruhl's cipher-messages to the Chief of the General Staff at Prague and hiding them in that desk and then having a couple of Italian agents as currish as yourself hound her until she was to swing in with your plans! That was the scheme, and when the time comes you're going to answer for it! But you're going to answer for it to me first! And you're going to do it before you get out of this room!"

The big blonde face was no longer unconcerned. The debonair expression about the heavy lips had vanished. The yellow-lashed lids had narrowed over the eyes and the jaw was thrust forward, as though the huge skull had been racked by the pressure of some vast yet invisible force at the nape of the neck. The colour of the face itself had also changed, the blood beneath the cuticle seeming to curdle and stagnate and leave splashes of saffron against a yellow background. And it was not a pleasant face to look upon.

But Kestner dwelt on none of these things. What suddenly but indeterminately disturbed him was the discovery that Watchel's hands were shaking as he fell back a step or two, with his eyes on the other man as he did so.