To search this place and find his man--if he were there at
all--without being discovered, while its inmates buzzed about like so many
startled hornets, was a fair impossibility; to attempt it was to court
death.
None the less he was inflexible in determination to go on, to push his luck
to its extremity, by sheer force to bend fortuity to his service and suffer
without complaint whatever the consequences of its recoil.
Yet even as he advanced a foot to begin the descent, he withdrew it.
On the ground floor, a door closing with a resounding crash had proved the
signal for an outburst of expostulant, acrimonious voices: some half a
dozen men giving angry tongue at one and the same time, their roars of
polysyllabic gutturalisms fusing into utterly unintelligible clamour.
One thought of a mutiny in a German madhouse.
Moment after moment passed, the squall persisting with unmitigated
viciousness. If now and again it subsided momentarily, it was only into
uglier growls and swiftly to rise once more to high frenzy of incoherence.
Pages:
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363