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THROUGH THE DOOR · The Jailer of Souls

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  Chapter seven of The Jailure of Souls by Hamilton Craigie. This liberyvox recording is
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  in the public domain. Read by Yoganan The Jailure of Souls, Chapter seven.
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  Through the door. The knocking was not loud. It was merely a
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  discreet tap, but there was a quality of hurry in it, and a
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  stair moving without sound on the thick pile of the rug. Almost with the
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  same motion, turned the key and flung by the door. At first he
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  could see nothing. The corridor, thick piled with shadows, even at high
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  noon, showed merely as a darkening glimmer, out of which there sprang Suddenly
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  a face like a white glimmering oval. A voice came with a quick hissing
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  sibilance. Sh quiet, I must not be seen, or else he closet
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  door. The girl stepped inwards swiftly, her white face turned to the man
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  before her in a sort of frozen calm. Anister had a vague impression of
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  having seen her somewhere. For that golden head beneath its close fitting toke,
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  the faint remembered order of fresh violets, the face with the piquant loveliness just
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  now, however, white and drown It was like a strain of music heard
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  and then forgotten. Closing the heavy door and locking it, he turned swiftly
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  to the gull well, he said, his gaze upon her in a cold,
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  searching scrutiny. Isn't this a trifle sudden? But the girl lifted her
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  stony face. I have little time, she said, with a curious,
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  spent breathlessness, as if she had been running. I am clear richly secretary
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  to Hamilton Drooke, that is I was. I'm a secretary no longer.
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  But he does not know about it yet. She paused again, with that
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  hard held breathing moistened the stiff lips. I warned you that day on the
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  train. Do you remember I warned you? Because I knew Hamilton Drooke.
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  I know him even better now. He meant to kill you, mister anistor,
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  and now his schemes to use me is at it, interrupted Annister dryly,
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  then at a low headshake he stiffened. He would have finished you even
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  after your agreement, but that is not his way. But he will not
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  make use of you in the way that you think. That careful plan of
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  which he told you that was just a blind There are no ranches near enough.
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  The s s s that too, was just a part of the story.
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  You see. He wants to keep you here, that is all,
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  until such a time as he thinks it necessary to remove you. But his
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  real motive, his actual plan, I know nothing about. I may suspect,
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  but I do not think about it. She paused again, her expression
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  bridgid. As there sounded a faint, half audible footfall from the corridor without
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  it passed. He would kill me if he knew, She continued tonelessly,
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  that warning on the train. I did that at his order. If he
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  could have frightened you off, he would have been satisfied with that. But
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  now it will be different. I tell you this on my own account.
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  And now she laid a slim hand on his arm. Don't go to the
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  rendezvous to night, mister Anister Allison will be there. You remember him.
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  He was a man who tried to keep you on that train. She smiled
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  faintly with her lips, but her eyes were somber. Allison's Rook's jackle.
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  Just as rocus sentence was never completed, there came a coughing grunt from just
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  outside the door. A streak of flame from the half opened transom jest above.
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  The girl stiffened, her face went blank. She slid downward to the
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  rug even as Anister, stapping back, the lock had flung white, the
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  door gone out. He burst into the corridor, as from the shadows at
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  a far corner. He fancied that he heard the faint echo of a taunting
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  laugh, but there was no one there. Rushing to the stairhead, he
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  found nothing nobody. The man who had fired that shot had used a silencer.
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  He had disappeared either into one of the bed chambers to right and left,
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  or down the stair But it was no time for speculation. The girl
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  would be needing attention, if indeed she was not already past all aid Aniester
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  had wasted no time but for a heart beat. As he raced backward along
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  the hole, his eye was caught and held by the quick glint of metal
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  from the carpet at his feet. Stooping as he ran, he swept up
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  the object, possibly an empty shell. Then, on the threshold of his
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  room, recoiled with a gasping oath, for the girl had vanished. Stunned,
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  Anister stood silent, mechanically unclosing his stiff fingers upon the object which they
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  held. He stared at it, now rigid with remembrance and a growing fear,
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  oddly twisted and distorted, its dull gold surface, glinting dully under the
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  light. The thing that he had found lay on his open palm. It
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  was a tentis bridge. The end of Chapter seven