His cunning, his favour in the countenance of fortune,
or whatever it was that had enabled him to make the girl his prisoner and
bring her here, bade fair to prove his salvation.
Deep in Lanyard's consciousness an echo stirred of half-forgotten words:
"_Vengeance is mine_...."
The sense of frustration brewed a hopelessness as stark as that of a
brow-beaten child. A blackness seemed to be settling down upon his
faculties. A mist wavered momentarily before his eyes. He gulped
convulsively, swallowing what had almost been a sob.
But he spoke in a voice positively dispassionate.
"Keep your hands up."
Lanyard removed and pocketed the key, crossed to the middle of the room
without once letting his gaze waver from the face of the Prussian,
passed behind him, planted the muzzle of the pistol beneath Ekstrom's
shoulder-blade, and methodically searched him, finding and putting aside on
the desk one automatic, nothing else.
"Stand aside!"
The almost puerile measure of his disappointment was betrayed in the thrust
with which he shouldered Ekstrom out of the way, so forcibly that the man
was sent staggering wildly half a dozen paces.
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