The Heads of Cerberus | Page 2

fingers. In a
sudden frenzy of haste he tore from his pockets the trinkets he had
placed there a few moments earlier, threw them all back on the stack of
papers, and without another glance for the safe or its contents fairly ran
across the room to the door. Flinging it open, he emerged into a short,
narrow passageway.
There, however, he paused, listening intently at the head of a narrow
stairway that led downward. Two other doors opened off the passage;
but both were closed. Behind those doors and throughout the house
below all was quiet. Ever and again, from the street, three stories below,
there rose the heavy rattle of a passing truck or cart. Within the house
there was no sound at all.
Assured of that, the man raised his eyes toward the ceiling. In its center
was a closed wooden transom. Frowning, the man tested the transom
with his finger tips, found it immovable, and, after some further
hesitation, began descending the narrow stairs, a step at a time, very
cautiously. They creaked under him, every creak startlingly loud in that
otherwise silent place.
Reaching the landing at the floor below, he was about to essay the next

flight downward, when abruptly, somewhere in the rear of the ground
floor, a door opened and closed. The sound was followed by swift, light
footfalls. They crossed the reception hall below, reached the stair, and
began to mount.
His face bathed in a sudden sweat of desperation, the man above darted
back along the second-floor hallway. One after the other he swiftly
turned the handles of three closed doors. One was locked, one opened
upon a closet stacked to overflowing with trunks and bags; the third
disclosed a large bedroom, apparently empty, though the bed had
evidently been slept in.
He sprang inside, shut the door softly, looked for a key, found none,
and thereafter stood motionless, his hand gripping the knob, one ear
against the panel.
Having ascended the stairs, the footsteps were now advancing along the
passage. They reached that very door against which the man stood
listening. They halted there. Some one rapped lightly.
With a groan the man inside drew back. Even as he did so he found
himself whirled irresistibly about and away from the door.
A great hand had descended upon his shoulder from behind. That large
hand, he discovered, belonged to a man immensely tall--a huge,
looming giant of a man, who had stolen upon him while he had ears
only for those footsteps in the passage.
The fellow's only garment was a Turkish robe, flung loosely about his
enormous shoulders. His black hair, damp from the bath, stood out like
a fierce, shaggy mane above a dark, savage face in which a pair of
singularly bright blue eyes blazed angrily upon the intruder. This
forceful and sudden apparition in a room which the latter had believed
unoccupied, was sufficiently alarming. In the little sharp cry which
escaped the intruder's throat, however, there seemed a note of emotion
other than terror--different from and more painful than mere terror.
"You--you!" he muttered, and fell silent.

"For the love of--" began the giant. But he, too, seemed suddenly
moved past verbal expression. As a somber landscape lights to the flash
of sunshine, his heavy face changed and brightened. The black scowl
vanished. Shaggy brows went up in a look of intense surprise, and the
fiercely set mouth relaxed to a grin of amazed but supremely
good-humored delight.
"Why, it is!" he ejaculated at length. "It surely is--Bob Drayton!"
And then, with a great, pleased laugh, he released the other's shoulder
and reached for his hand.
The intruder made no movement of response. Instead, he drew away
shrinkingly, and with hands behind him stood leaning against the door.
When he spoke it was in the tone of quiet despair with which a man
might accept an intolerable situation from which escape has become
impossible.
"Yes, Trenmore, it's I," he said. Even as the words left his lips there
came another loud rapping from outside. Some one tried the handle,
and only Drayton's weight against the door kept it closed.
"Get away from there, Martin!" called the big man peremptorily. "I'll
ring again when I want you. Clear out now! It's otherwise engaged I
am."
"Very well, sir," came the muffled and somewhat wondering reply.
Staring solemnly at one another, the two in the bedroom stood silent
while the invisible Martin's steps receded slowly along the hall and
began to descend the stairs.
"And for why will you not take my hand?" demanded the giant with a
frown that was bewildered, rather than angry.
The man with the bruised head laughed. "I can't-can't--" Unable to
control his voice, he lapsed into miserable silence.

The giant's frown deepened. He