Page:Biggers and Ritchie - Inside the Lines.djvu/79

 met by the doctor's peremptory order. The captain heard the front door close. A long wait, and Doctor Koch's black beard, with the surmounting eyes of thick glass, appeared at a parting of the folding doors. Woodhouse, the tiny thermometer still sticking absurdly from his mouth, met the basilisk stare of those two ovals of glass with a coldly casual glance. He removed the thermometer from between his lips and read it, with a smile, as if that were part of playing a game. Still the ghastly stare from the glass eyes over the bristling beard, searching—searching.

"Well," Woodhouse said lightly, "no need of an alibi evidently."

Doctor Koch stepped into the room with the lightness of a cat, walked to a desk drawer at one side, and fumbled there a second, his back to his guest. When he turned he held a short-barreled automatic at his hip; the muzzle covered the shirt-sleeved man in the chair.

"Much need—for an alibi—from you!" Doctor Koch croaked, his voice dry and flat with rage. "Much need, Mister Nineteen Thirty-two. Commence your explanation