“It’s one of my men,” said Recklow in a voice like a low groan. “Where on earth is Mrs. Cleves?”
“I came to tell you,” said the agent, “Mrs. Cleves came out of the first house nearly an hour ago. She got into the coupé and told the driver to go to the Ritz.”
“She’s gone to the Ritz,” repeated the agent. “No one else has come out. And I began to worry—hearing nothing of you, Mr. Recklow. So I stepped in to see——”
“You say that Mrs. Cleves went out of the house we entered, got into the coupé, and told the driver to go to the Ritz?” demanded Cleves, astounded.
“It had not returned when I came in here.”
“Go back and look for it. Look in the other street,” said Recklow sharply.
The agent hurried away over the creaking boards. The four men gazed at one another.
“The thing to do is to obey her and stay where we are,” said Recklow grimly. “Who knows what peril we may cause her if we move from——”
His words froze on his lips as Tressa’s voice rang out from the darkness beyond the door they were guarding:
“Victor I I—I need you! Come to me, my husband!”
As Cleves sprang through the door into the darkness beyond, Benton smashed a window sash with all the force of his shoulder, and, reaching out through the shattered glass, tore the rotting blinds from their hinges, letting in a flood of sickly light.
Against the bare wall stood Tressa, both arms extended, her hands flat against the plaster, and each hand transfixed and pinned to the wall by a knife.
A white sheet lay at her feet. On it rested a third knife. And, bending on one knee to pick it up, they caught a glimpse of a slender young man in fashionable afternoon attire, who, as they entered with the crash of the shattered window in their ears, sprang to his nimble feet and stood confronting them, knife in hand.
Instantly every man fired at him and the bullets whipped the plaster to a smoke behind him, but the slender, dark skinned young man stood motionless, looking at them out of brilliant eyes that slanted a trifle.
Again the racket of the fusillade swept him and filled the room with plaster dust.
Cleves, frantic with horror, laid hold of the knives that pinned his wife’s hands to the wall, and dragged them out.
But there was no blood, no wound to be seen on her soft palms. She took the murderous looking blades from him, threw one terrible look at Sanang, kicked the shroud across the floor toward him, and flung both knives upon it.