Page:Edgar Wallace - The Green Rust.djvu/152

148 White made a gurgling noise in his throat and held on to the desk for support.

"I have only the haziest information as to what it is all about, but somehow"—McNorton knit his brows in a frown and was speaking half to himself—"I seem to feel that it is a bad business—a damnably bad business."

He took up his hat from the table and walked to the door.

"I don't know whether to say au revoir or good-bye," he said with twitching lips.

"Good-bye—ah—is a very good old-fashioned word," said Mr. White, in an heroic attempt to imitate the other's good humour.

R. VAN HEERDEN sat by the side of the big four-poster bed, where the girl lay, and his cold blue eyes held a spark of amusement.

"You look very foolish," he said.

Oliva Cresswell turned her head sharply so as to remove the man from her line of vision.

More than this she could not do, for her hands and feet were strapped, and on the pillow, near her head, was a big bath-towel saturated with water which had been employed in stifling her healthy screams which marked her return to understanding.

"You look very foolish," said the doctor, chewing at the end of his cigar, "and you look no more foolish than you have been. Bridgers let you out, eh? Nice man, Mr. Bridgers; what had he been telling you?"

She turned her head again and favoured him with a stare. Then she looked at the angry red mark on her wrists where the straps chafed.

"How Hun-like!" she said; but this time he smiled.