Page:The gold brick (1910).djvu/212

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  • thing like defiance, strode on his short legs out of the

high-ceiled room, and Mendenhall followed him, but meekly. As they filed past, Grigsby, with face up-*turned, a face that now in anger had taken on the blue tinge of butchered beef, drew his hands from his overcoat pocket and clasped them behind his back. The governor bowed as the little man and Mendenhall swept out before him. And then he drew the big walnut door to.

Standing out in the corridor Grigsby waited, and as he stood and waited, he fumbled in the outer pocket of his overcoat. Suddenly he drew forth his hand. His face had turned white, the white of a fish's belly.

As the governor drew the big walnut door to, and as it swung behind him, it pushed before it, scraping with the peevish voice of a ratchet along the matted floor, a piece of crumpled paper. Grigsby, who had turned toward Mendenhall with a look of death's despair, saw it, and started, a faint ray of hope beaming in his eye. But the paper lay under the governor's feet.

The governor closed the doors.

"You may lock them, Mr. Mendenhall," he said.