Page:Barbour--Joan of the ilsand.djvu/187

Rh snap off part of the vine next morning, so that it would not disturb him again at such an ungodly hour. It must have been that tapping which awoke him, and yet, though he closed his eyes, he was just as wide awake. Odd! Surely he wasn't cultivating nerves!

A creak in a floor board. It was within a few feet of his bedside. With one swift movement he grasped the cover, throwing it aside, and raised his head from the pillow. Death, swift and sure, would have followed had he been a fraction of a second later in rising, for a keen-bladed knife, impelled by an arm with the strength of steel, was thrust downward at the spot where his breast had been. The hand round the haft grazed down the spine of the man from the Four Winds.

Like a shot from a pistol, Keith leaped out of bed, with a vivid memory of what had happened the last time a murderous attack had been made on him in the same room. In three strides he was at the window, to cut off his assailant's escape; and with a roar that might have been heard a mile away, he was bellowing for Chester Trent. He always kept a loaded revolver under his pillow, but in his haste he had forgotten it. He could not see a thing, and any moment he expected to feel the thrust of steel into his flesh, but he was risking that. Whatever happened, the black was not going to escape the same way this time.