"In Heaven's name, Monsieur Duchemin, what are you doing? Is this a time
for childishness--?"
He responded with a smile of boyish mischief so genuine that her doubts of
his reason seemed all too well confirmed.
"Making up my understudy," he said simply. And brushing his hands over the
rug to rid them of superfluous soot, Lanyard rose. "Please go back and
stand by the door--on the side of the hinges. I'll be with you in one
minute."
Resigned to humour this lunatic whim--what else could she do?--the girl
retreated to the position designated, and watched with ever darker doubts
of his sanity, while Lanyard hurriedly drew the shells from his automatic
and carefully placed its butt in the slack grasp of Ekstrom's fingers.
Then, lifting from a near-by table a great cut-glass bowl of flowers, the
adventurer inverted it over Ekstrom's body.
Expending its full force upon the man's chest, that miniature deluge
splashed widely, wetting his face, half filling his open mouth. Some of
the soot was washed away, but not a great deal: enough stuck fast to suit
Lanyard's purpose.
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