The Heads of Cerberus | Page 2

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 drew back a little, hitching the robe up over his bare shoulders.
"What is it ails you, Bobby? Here I'm glad to see you the way I cannot find words to tell it and