Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/62

. A look of shadowy bewilderment troubled the eyes behind the amber lenses. But the painting went on in silence.

This silence was shatterd [sic] by the sudden shrill of a call-bell. At that sound, however, the old lady in the arm-chair neither stirred nor blinked.

It was the younger woman at the drawing-desk who started, looked apprehensively about, paused a moment, and then quickly crossed to the table where the telephone stood. There, placing the receiver at her ear, she listened intently, speaking back an occasional guarded monosyllable or two, in Italian. It was plain that she was receiving and not delivering a message. When she returned to her work she did so with somewhat heightened colour and with a more energetic movement of the fingers as she bent over the little oval of ivory.

A second interruption to this work came in the form of a peremptory knock on the entrance-door. Again the woman who called herself Miss Keating stopped in her labours, looked from the novel-reading nurse to the slumberous figure in black, and then promptly answered the knock.

It turned out to be nothing more than a street pedlar, selling sponges. So eager was he to make a sale, so eloquent was he in his talk, that the preoccupied woman apparently purchased a sponge as the most expeditious way of ending his importunities.

That young woman, however, had scarcely reached her chair before the knock was repeated, more peremptorily than ever.

This time she was greeted by the Sicilian