Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/360

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344
THE DOOR OF DREAD

She leaned closer over the dial, staring intently at the foreshortened image of this man as he took off his hat and wiped his forehead. She noticed the low receding line of that forehead as it ran back into the delta of the bald head, the square and bony jaw, the wide slope of the loose-hung shoulders. And her study of that simian figure did not leave her long in doubt. She knew it was Canby, the same Canby who had acted as Breitman's butler in New York at the time of the coast-gun thefts.

"That's three of them!" she said under her breath.

Then she looked and listened again, for the three men had ranged themselves about the table directly under her lens, and Andelman had produced a pack of cards and a pocket case of chips. They were about to mask their conference, she saw, by pretending that it was a friendly game of poker.

Heinold was indolently counting out the chips when a knock sounded on the door. It was Andelman, Sadie saw, who rose to answer that knock.

She waited, breathless, until she saw Andelman's figure again move across the dial. Then close behind this figure moved another, a shorter and stouter figure, a figure that walked with a bird-like waddle, looking in diminuendo more than ever like