Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/89

 He was at the door, and his key was in the lock, before the reverberations from that volley had died down. He had the door open and had sidled out before he heard Morello's repeated command for light, and the woman's distracted cry that she could not turn them on.

Kestner, listening to their contending voices, closed the door and locked it. He decided, on second thoughts, to leave the key where it stood. Then he groped his way through the velvety blackness to the street door. As he expected, he found it locked. But for this, too, he still carried his pass-key.

He opened the door quickly but cautiously, dreading what the sound of those shots might at any moment bring about him. It had never been an inviting neighbourhood; and it was no longer an inviting household.

He held his automatic in his right hand as he slipped through the partly opened door and faced the narrow street. He saw that street lying peacefully before him, bathed in its white Sicilian moonlight. He could see the serrated shadow-edge of the house-fronts dividing the roadway, one half in moonlight, one half in unbroken darkness.

It was as he squinted down this tranquil moonlit vista, feeling sure that Wilsnach would be coming on the run at any moment, that the gloom opposite him was stabbed by a jet of flame.

Kestner, at the same moment, stumbled back with a sense of shock. He awakened, the next second, first to a stinging sensation along the top of the head, and next to the fact that he had dropped back into a