Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/280

 vince herself that she was acting in a moving-picture drama of some kind. She forced these pictures into her thoughts, and others; she called up reserve after reserve, but they were not strong enough for the onslaughts of terror. What were they going to do with her? Where were they taking her? What did it all mean?

The ride took something more than an hour. There was at no time any indication that her captors were in a hurry. The horse jogged along. When the carriage came to the final halt there was a wait of four or five minutes. Then she felt the muscular arms of the Chinaman again. She was being carried into a house. The air was strong with the stale smoke of Turkish cigarettes.

"Take her up to room twelve." It was a woman's voice. "I'll send Saki San up with food later."

A few minutes after Ruth was set down and the knots at her wrists were loosened. A door closed and a key turned in the lock. She dragged her hands free and tore off the bandages. It was dark, but she knew that she was in a bedroom.

There were two windows, rear and side. The one in the rear overlooked a small back yard in the center of which stood a kind of outhouse. A Chinaman was lounging in the doorway, smoking his little metal pipe. Behind him other Chinese moved in a film of blue vapor.

The side window was less than six feet from the next house. She stared into the velvet blackness of the window opposite. Even as she gazed a