Page:Yellow Claw 1920.djvu/432

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424
THE YELLOW CLAW

streets, stepped into the hushed atmosphere of the flat where already a Visitant, unseen but potent, was arrived, and now was beckoning, shadowlike, to Mira Leroux.

“Will you please sit down and wait,” said Garnham, placing chairs for the two Scotland Yard men in the dining-room.

“Who’s inside?” whispered Dunbar, with that note of awe in his voice which such a scene always produces; and he nodded in the direction of the lobby.

“Mr. Leroux, sir,” replied the man, “the nurse, Miss Cumberly, Dr. Cumberly and Miss Ryland”…

“No one else?” asked the detective sharply.

“And Mr. Gaston Max,” added the man. “You’ll find whisky and cigars upon the table there, sir.”

He left the room. Dunbar glanced across at Sowerby, his tufted brows raised, and a wry smile upon his face.

“In at the death, Sowerby!” he said grimly, and lifted the stopper from the cut-glass decanter.

In the room where Mira Leroux lay, so near to the Borderland that her always ethereal appearance was now positively appalling, a hushed group stood about the bed.

“I think she is awake, doctor,” whispered the nurse softly, peering into the emaciated face of the patient.