Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/36

 and examined the little collection. He looked up quickly as he came to the neatly folded bank-note.

"So you wanted only one?" he said, and the grim lines about his mouth hardened a little as he stared at Kestner. Then he bent over the drawing-table again.

"Tell Maura to come here," he said, with a quick motion towards the girl in the tip-tilted hat. He was studying a sheet of writing which had been taken from Kestner's pocket.

"Where'll I get her?" asked the girl.

"Downstairs in Bennoit's. Promptly, please!"

The girl slipped out through the studio-door, and closed it after her. Kestner sat there and watched Lambert wheel a projecting-lantern out into the middle of the studio and direct the lens towards the screen of white cotton at the farther end of the room. He saw the sheet of paper inserted in the lens, heard the snap of a switch, and black across the white screen beheld his own signature, magnified many times, magnified until each letter was at least a foot in height.

Morello, tired of standing, sank into a chair, facing the prisoner. In his hand, however, the Neapolitan still held the revolver, and never for a moment did his gaze wander from Kestner.

Lambert, going back to the drawing-table, suddenly turned and crossed to the open safe. His search there seemed a brief one. But his face paled as he turned and stood erect again. He was still beside the safe when the girl called Cherry stepped back into the room. She was followed by the woman Lambert had spoken of as Maura, the woman whom Kestner had