Page:Vance--The false faces.djvu/305

Rh action, in two bounds cleared landing and stairs, in another threw himself upon the door. It opened readily. Entering, he put his back to it, with his left hand groped for, found and turned a key, his right holding ready the automatic pistol he had taken from the lockers of the U-boat.

The room was a combination of administrative bureau and study, very handsomely if somewhat over-decorated and furnished, with an atmosphere as distinctively German as that of a Bierstube, the sombreness of its colour scheme lending weight to its array of massive desks, tables, chairs, bookcases, and lounges.

Between great draped windows and an impressive chimney-piece opposite, beside a broad, long desk, in a straight-backed chair sat a woman, gagged, bound as to her wrists, strips of cloth which had but lately bound ankles as well on the floor about her feet.

That woman was Cecelia Brooke.

Ekstrom stood behind her, in the act of loosening the knots which held the gag secure.

For a space of thirty seconds, transfixed by the apparition of his enemy, he did not stir other than to raise weaponless hands in deference to the pistol trained upon his head. But the blood ebbed from his face, leaving it a ghastly mask in which shone the eyes of a man who sees certain death closing in upon him and is powerless to combat it, even to die fighting for life. And his lips curled back in a snarl neither of contempt nor of hatred but of terror.

And for as long Lanyard remained as motionless, rooted in a despondency of thwarted hopes no less pro-