Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/46

 This interruption took the form of a door flung open and a white-faced woman calling into the studio.

"Stop!" gasped the woman, as she flung through the door and turned the key in the lock.

Both men looked up, a little stupidly, their mouths still open, their postures still those of strained muscles and sinews. Kestner saw it was the woman called Maura.

"Stop!" she gasped, a little weakly. "We're being watched!"

Her hat was awry of her head, her veil was hanging loose, and she was plainly out of breath.

"Quick," she gasped again, leaning against the wall; "there's a man at every door! and two gendarmes are on the stairs! Listen! I hear them coming!"

Morello was the first to stoop and catch up his handbag. Lambert's grip on the prisoner's arm relaxed. He wrenched the revolver from Kestner's fingers, dropped it into his pocket, and darted for his bag.

"Then the closet!" he cried as he ran.

"Why the closet?" asked the bewildered Neapolitan.

"The secret passage, you fool!" called Lambert, as he dove through the door leading into the second closet. He was followed by Morello. Kestner heard the soft scrape and stutter of a sliding-panel. It had been a piece of stupidity, he told himself, to overlook those closet-walls.

"It leads to the roof, and then down through the Poret's passage," explained the woman, still leaning against the wall. She stood watching Kestner as he