The handwriting on the wall : an exploit of the Shadowers, Inc.

Front matter

*

The •

Handwriting on the

Chapter I

T HE SHADOWERS, INC., was unique among agencies of private investigation. Not only in its discrimination in the cases which it accepted —to say nothing of its original, strictly individualized methods of procedure—but in its very personnel it dif¬ fered from any other organization for the suppression of crime.

Dedicating its services solely to clients of the high¬ est social as well as financial standing to whom con¬ fidence and discretion would be more potent factors than prosecution, it undertook no affairs of a scan¬ dalous nor trivial nature; yet its half dozen members were specialists in widely dissimilar lines and together they formed a combination qualified to deal with prac¬ tically every type of malefactor known to the records of the police and secret service.

Confidence and discretion were as essential to The Shadowers as to any of their clients, and well might they be considered specialists in dealing with crime, for all six were themselves past masters in every form of roguery short of murder. Indeed, they had all, with the sole exception of Rex Powell, their leader and moving spirit, at various unfortunate periods served terms in prison for their transgressions. Hence they had welcomed his suggestion that, having formerly played the game from the wrong side—wrong, not necessarily from the reformer’s standpoint but from the standpoint of practicability and profit—they now should turn their highly specialized knowledge to the solving of crime problems. The result during the few months following their incorporation had exceeded their most optimistic hopes.

Nevertheless the offices of The Shadowers in the Bolingbroke, newest and most imposing of business buildings mid-town, bore a distinctly forlorn air one balmy April evening when Clifford Nichols, ex-forger and counterfeiter, opened the outer door with his key and glanced at the empty chair behind the desk as he started for the inner sanctum where he held forth as handwriting expert of the firm.

Then he paused, a frown of annoyance creasing his esthetic brow, and the slim, tapering white fingers whose artistry in the past had hoodwinked half the banking institutions in the country played nervously with his small, dark goatee. Some one had placed a tiny bunch of fragrant pink arbutus on the exquisitely inlaid desk. Cliff Nichols eyed the oddly shaped glass receptacle which held it and then unceremoniously thrust open a sliding panel which led to the laboratory on his left.

“You put that confounded arbutus on Ethel’s desk!” he declared accusingly. “Good heavens, Henry, isn’t it bad enough even after four months to come in day after day and find her place vacant, without having the fact emphasized by a—a memorial?”

Henry Corliss, very fat, very bald and all of fifty, looked up from the chemical retorts spread upon the table before him with a wistful expression on his round, good-natured face. His erstwhile profession as a pur¬ veyor of fake medicines had for years held in abeyance the passion for toxicology which, combined with his rare knowledge and research, bade fair to bring him belated eminence now, and had already rendered him an indispensable adjunct to the organization. He glanced slyly towards the desk.

“Those sassy little spring flowers kinder reminded me of Ethel,” he remarked apologetically. “Pert, and fresh, and gosh-almighty sweet! You don’t think she could have gone back—to shoplifting, I mean? I don’t see how Rex doped it out, when he watched her work¬ ing the stores, that she’d be such a little wonder of a secretary for us, but we never half appreciated her till she took this vacation—”

“You there, Cliff? Thought you’d gone to Atlantic City.” The panel at the farther side of the laboratory slipped aside, disclosing the handsome—if somewhat weak—face and snappily attired figure of the young¬ est recruit to The Shadowers, the skillful ex-yegg and boxman who had developed into their mechanical genius.

“I decided to put it off, I don’t know why,” Cliff re¬ sponded idly. “Has Rex been in?”

“Not since morning.” Phil Howe’s expression was unwontedly crestfallen and he added disgustedly; “There’s been nothing doing and it’s time to shut up shop. We haven’t had a worth-while case since Ethel left us flat!”

Henry Corliss shook his head in lugubrious assent and Cliff Nichols remarked:

“There doesn’t appear to be a leaf stirring. I really dropped in to-night on the off chance that there might be news of our little honorary member; I fancy I’ll wait, anyway, and see Rex.”

The angle of the small study, glimpsed behind Phil Howe, revealed walls lined with richly bound books of reference and the corner of a table laden with weigh¬ ing machines, magnifying glasses and bottles of inks, dyes and acids. It was Cliff Nichols’ own den, and that of Phil lay just beyond, the two together with the laboratory and ante-room forming four sides of the six-sided central chamber presided over by the presi¬ dent, Rex Powell.

The remaining two apartments of the suite were oc¬ cupied by Lucian Baynes, the art connoisseur and jewel expert whose smuggling days had made history; and by George Roper, king of confidence men and fake spirit¬ ualists, whose unique study of human nature had made him valuable now as cross-examiner extraordinary of reluctant witnesses.

At the present moment, beyond the hexagonal inner room, Lucian Baynes stood, poised in the aperture be¬ tween his diminutive studio and the somber, barbarically luxurious audience chamber of the pseudo-sooth¬ sayer, peering with interest at the long, thin, blackclad legs protruding from beneath the gorgeously draped dais.

“What in the name of the Sphinx are you doing, George?” he drawled. “Worshiping some new god of the gullible?”

“Can’t find a benighted thing in this temple of bunk since Ethel went away!” A mournful, muffled voice sounded from under the heavy folds of dull, glimmer¬ ing metallic stuff and the legs crawled backward, bring¬ ing to view an attenuated, frock-coated figure and an ascetic, dignified countenance, streaked with dust and framed in dark hair graying slightly at the temples. “If we only knew where that enterprising young woman had sequestered herself I think Rex’s mind would be easier; he’s been worrying lately.”

Lucian Baynes shrugged his slim, London-clad shoul¬ ders.

“Ethel survived a precarious childhood in heaven knows what part of the slums, and a brilliant, if brief, career of larceny under the able direction of Lefty Jane; I fancy she is capable of taking care of herself during her proposed campaign of self-education, but I miss her as much as you do. Has it occurred to you that she may have become too cultivated to associate with the rest of us? Remember, she still considers us a band of unregenerate crooks running a new swin¬ dling game—or worse. What if she has decided to forswear us and all our works?”

George Roper got slowly to his feet, consternation struggling with incredulity in the look he cast upon his confrere.

“Lord, you don’t think that, Luce? She can’t be much over twenty, but she’s as loyal as they come and the love of the game is bred in the bone with her just as it is with the rest of us. We’d never get anybody to take her place.”

An abrupt signal from the buzzer seemed to give emphasis to his final remark, and Lucian turned to¬ ward the panel leading to the central room from which all the other offices radiated.

“There’s Rex now! Wonder if there’s something in the wind? Come on, George.”

The man who nodded to them in greeting from the head of the old Jacobean council table was in the middle forties, tall and well-built with the assured poise of the aristocrat. His eager, tense attitude, his clean-cut features, and his incisive gray eyes belied the touch of silver at his temples, and as he glanced about at his five companions—for the other three had already joined him—his dominance over them was apparent, widely diversified in breeding and type though they were.

“Good evening, gentlemen.” Rex Powell’s crisply cordial tones held a note of reawakened purpose which had been absent of late, and Lucian and Clifford, recruits themselves from a higher social order, eyed each other significantly with swift anticipation. “Since we are all here together I suggest that we hold a little conference.”

“Holy Cat!” Phil Howe’s merry eyes began to sparkle. “Have we got a new case?”

“It’s Ethel!” Henry Corliss folded his hands-over his rotund stomach with the contentment of utter con¬ viction. “She’s coming back.”

“No, it isn’t about Ethel.” Rex Powell shook his head and for an instant his eyes clouded. Then he lifted his shoulders as though to throw off the burden of an unwelcome thought and added briskly: “We haven’t any prospective case to consider, either, but Cliff has decided to postpone his start for Atlantic City till to-morrow, and I’d like to discuss with you a new plan for reaching prospective clients. You re¬ call that when we founded The Shadowers we sent out five hundred engraved notes announcing our special line of service to as many matrons of exclusive posi¬ tion, and an equal number of circulars to financiers here in the East?”

“Yes, and remember what we made out of the first three cases alone!” George Roper gazed ceilingward in complacent reminiscence. “That affair of the three Burning Black Pearls alone brought each of us more than any individual haul we ever made in our lives, and solving the problem of the disappearing safe was a moral satisfaction, as well as highly remunerative, though Ethel did very nearly spoil the game for us. As Luce says, it was all due to you, Rex.”

“That is true.” Lucian Baynes nodded. “If Rex has a new plan now, though, for heaven’s sake let us try it! We’ve had no case of even superficial interest since the matter of the Merrington Blue Diamond and the gruesome schemes of that dealer in death—!”

“Say, whatta you expect in less than a year?” Phil Howe demanded. “Rex did a lot more than just get us together. Weren’t these offices all his idea, with the mechanical arrangements—the dictaphones that let us hear in our rooms what goes on in this one and the noiseless panels instead of doors; to say noth¬ ing of the ticker Ethel used to operate from the hid¬ den keyboard on her knees, that reeled off on the strip of paper through the slot in the wall here her own opinion of our clients while she was pumping them in the anteroom?”

“They are all useful, but not as important as the contrivances for quickly changing the aspect of this room so as to bring it into accord with the different types whose confidence we have to gain,” George Roper observed. “The psychology of it is perfect.”

“I wish some of us had been gifted with enough psychological bunk to guess what Ethel was up to when she asked for a vacation right after we finished the Merrington case.” Henry Corliss sighed heavily. “Of course I handled that, just as Luce had taken charge of the affair of the Burning Pearls and Phil was our boss in the investigation into that old rascal’s safe. It was my fault that Ethel wanted to leave us four months ago, for I got her to dye her hair and pose as a refined beauty expert up in Millerstown to get the gossip from the blue-blooded dames and find out who was sending those poison pen letters;

but I don’t believe she went away to educate herself or hide till her hair got yellow again, either! If we only knew—!”

His utterance was cut off as abruptly as though a hand had suddenly closed about his fat throat, for a peculiar sound had broken in upon it—a sound un¬ heard in that quiet room for four long months. It was a faint, metallic ticking and it seemed to come from the wall separating them from the anteroom.

“Gawd!” Phil Howe muttered under his breath. “Something’s working Ethel’s ticker!”

No one echoed his exclamation, but all eyes turned in the direction from which the staccato click came, and Henry pushed back his chair, his round, genial face paling. George Roper stopped him with a hur¬ ried gesture.

A small slit had opened in the panel from behind which the sound emanated and a narrow strip of paper appeared, unwinding like a ribbon.

Clifford Nichols glanced at their chief and then sprang for the message, smoothing the paper with nervously trembling fingers while his sensitive face twitched.

“What in the name of—!” He broke off and then read aloud: “‘Young girl desires position secretary. Minds her own business, does what she is told, don’t chew gum, dye hair, or—’ ”

“Ethel!” Lucian exclaimed, but Rex was the first to spring up and tear aside the sliding panel.

In the chair behind the desk, with a small keyboard on her shimmering brown-clad knees, sat a demure young person with a pretty, slightly flushed face and a smooth glint of golden hair, like spun floss beneath a small hat redolent of the sophisticated springtime of Parisian boulevards.

“My dear girl!” The clicking stopped as Rex Powell took both her hands.

“Ethel, where have you . . . ?”

“How could you . . . ?”

“Why didn’t you let us know . . . !”

“Four whole months ... !”

“Gee, ain’t we grand!”

The remaining five Shadowers spoke almost in uni¬ son with their leader as they crowded about her, but Ethel Jepson raised guileless blue eyes to Rex’s face.

“I didn’t know whether you’d want me to come back or not, but I just couldn’t stay away a day longer!” she said.

“Not want you!” Rex echoed reproachfully. “We’ve been worried to death! Where have you been—?”

He stopped abruptly, for a tawny, silky ball of malign fury had darted out from under her chair and launched itself upon him with a high-pitched snarl.

“Come here, Wee Sing.” Ethel picked the diminu¬ tive dog up and tucked it under her arm with an air of unconcern as she rose, but her flush had deepened. “May I put him in Mr. Corliss’ laboratory until I go home? We won’t hear him howl in there.”

“Of course, Ethel. Did you bring him for me to experiment on?” Henry pushed open the panel lead¬ ing to his sanctum.

“No, I didn’t,” she replied, as literally as of old. “I brought him because he bit Mrs. Gorham and she’s in hysterics. I don’t dare leave him at home till he gets used to the maids.”

Dropping her still snarling burden on the laboratory floor, she closed the panel and turned to precede the others into Rex’s study, while behind her The Shadowers exchanged glances that spoke volumes. The Ethel of four months ago would have waited to follow them instead of tripping ahead like one accustomed to the niceties of social usage; also, she would have been incapable of uttering three consecutive sentences without interlarding them with colloquialisms. But there was a change far more profound and indefinable than mere manner and speech. This couldn’t be Ethel Jepson!

“What’s the idea?” Phil Howe demanded, unable to restrain his curiosity. “Why* the tough Peke, and who’s Mrs. Gorham, and where do ‘the maids’ come in? You talk like a million, and you look like twice as much!”

“Wee Sing isn’t tough, he’s just temperamental.” Ethel Jepson lifted thin, arched brows. “Mrs. Gor¬ ham is my chaperone, and the maids—”

“Lord-A’mighty!” Henry Corliss sat down sud¬ denly in his chair at the council table as though his short, plump legs had failed him. “ ‘Chaperone!’

Ain’t you living downtown with that old woman—?”

“No, I found a position for her as housekeeper. Mrs. Gorham knows I’m private secretary to Mr. Rex Powell but it’s quite the thing for really smart girls to go in for business careers now and she doesn’t mind. She’s the widow of Talbot Gorham, if you happen to have heard of him.” Ethel paused and then her little laugh rippled out on the stunned silence. “It’s rather a jump from working only a year ago for Lefty Jane, but Mrs. Gorham likes me and I help keep her Park Avenue apartment going. I met her at Hot Springs.”

“My sainted aunt!” Cliff Nichols exclaimed. “Mrs. Talbot Gorham! I heard that he came a finan¬ cial cropper before he died, but she is decidedly in society still. If she ever hears, Ethel, that you’re connected with The Shadowers and—er—what our former professions were—!”

“She won’t,” Ethel responded tranquilly. “If you can put through your deals so cleverly that even I, working with you, can’t see how they’re done, there isn’t much danger that she’ll find out about any of us.”

This naive tribute held them enthralled for a mo¬ ment and then George Roper asked mildly:

“What were you doing at Hot Springs? Don’t you think, my child, you’d better come across and tell us all about it?”

“I wanted to make a lady of myself, didn’t I?” Ethel smiled. “I didn’t know then that it can’t be done—not Miss Merringtoh’s sort, anyway. You have to be born to that, but I did the next best thing. I went to a hotel and had my hair doctored, bought a lot more clothes, then hired a maid and went down to Palm Beach to meet my aunt.”

“Your—aunt!” There was awed respect in Lu¬ cian Baynes’ tones.

“Yes.” Ethel nodded. “She didn’t appear, of course, but a nice family did from the West, who thought everybody was in society but themselves, and they were so sorry for a sweet little thing like me be¬ ing unchaperoned that they asked me to join them and go to Hot Springs. They left just after I met Mrs. Gorham and I killed my aunt. That’s all, only I’ve been learning right along.”

“I should say you have!” Phil Howe ejaculated. “That don’t explain the Peke, though!”

“Oh, he was a—a present.” Ethel Jepson glanced down involuntarily at the bunch of valley lilies clus¬ tered about the single expensive orchid at her belt and then added defensively: “He likes me so I haven’t the heart to give him away— But tell me, have I missed anything big?”

“No. You put the jinx on us, Ethel. We haven’t turned a trick that got us anything like real money since you’ve been gone,” Phil mourned.

“Then I’m in time.” She drew a deep breath. “Something is going to break quick and I couldn’t bear to be out of it. That’s why I didn’t even wait till to-morrow.”

Rex Powell eyed her keenly.

“How do you know something is going to break, Ethel?”

“I simply felt that I had to get back to my desk,” she explained, adding with a touch of wistfulness: “That is, if it’s still mine. Am I—am I taken on again?”

She asked the question collectively of her em¬ ployers, but Rex nodded with a grave smile.

“Your desk has long been waiting for you, Ethel, but I want to know just what you mean about a new case.”

“It’s intuition, I guess.” She spoke with serene con¬ fidence. “You needn’t smile, Mr. Corliss; a woman can tell when things are going to happen. I just feel as if we were waiting, waiting—!”

“That’s what we’ve been doing!” Phil snorted.

“I don’t know.” Cliff Nichols shook his head. “There wasn’t any reason for putting off my trip to Atlantic City till to-morrow, but I changed my mind.”

“You see?” Ethel darted a glance around the table. “Mr. Nichols had a little of the same feeling. I thought so when I saw the Atlantic City address in his handwriting on the pad out there and then found him still here with you. I’m not just waiting for any¬ thing to turn up, but I know somebody is thinking of calling on us right now! A message is on the way!”

Her clear young voice rang with sincerity and George Roper remarked solemnly:

“My child, when the other members of this organi¬ zation retire on their ill-gotten gains you and I will find a partnership. With you to read the future, and me on the outside to pick up the dope about our pa¬ trons, we’d gather in all the loose money in the world!”

“Well, if anything’s coming to-night, it’d better start soon, for it’s nearly midnight,” Phil said skep¬ tically.

“As late as that?” Rex pulled a small notebook from his pocket. “Just give me your new address, Ethel, in case we should happen to need you in a hurry, and then we’ll—”

“Ah,” Ethel threw up her hand suddenly, inter¬ rupting him, for through the aperture leading to the outer office, which they had forgotten to close, there came the sharp, insistent whirring of the telephone upon her desk. “I knew it! Switch on your exten¬ sion, Mr. Powell.”

In a moment she had darted to the instrument and picked up the receiver as Rex held his own to his ear.

“The Shadowers?” A man’s voice muffled and shaking, as though the speaker were indescribably shocked yet retained sufficient self-possession to be cautious, vibrated over the wire. “I received a circu¬ lar of yours some months ago. I must see some one there to-night, within half an hour! I will bring a card.”

“What is the name, please?” Ethel asked calmly.

“I will bring a card!” the voice repeated with aug¬ mented emphasis. “Put me on to some one in charge at once! This is a matter which cannot wait!”

Ethel glanced over her shoulder into the inner room and Rex Powell gestured peremptorily. After a mo¬ ment he spoke into the transmitter.

“This is the president of The Shadowers. You wish an appointment at this hour? We were just leaving and it is rather against our rules—”

“‘Rules?’ ” The voice broke suddenly, harshly. “I must notify others later— others —do you under¬ stand? It must be done to-night! Unless I see you first it will be too late!”

“Very well,” Rex replied with swift decision. “We will wait here for you.”

Replacing the receiver he turned to the rest who were watching him in tense expectancy.

“Our client cannot give his name over the ’phone, nor hint at the nature of his business, but he will be here almost at once. Whatever has happened, he must notify the authorities to-night without fail, and from his tone I should judge that the man is in a des¬ perate state. There is only one crime which our laws compel a citizen to report whether he wishes to or not—that is, with drastic penalties.”

His tone was grave with portent and a stir ran around the table. Then Henry Corliss uttered the word in all their thoughts.

“Murder I”

Chapter II

L ORD-A’MIGHTY, what do you suppose is coming now? Anyway, it’s good to be on a real case again, with Ethel out there on the job!” Henry exclaimed, and then chuckled. Ethel had remained in the outer office to receive the late-coming client and the panel between was closed. “I didn’t honestly believe she could quit us! Who but that darn little kid could dive right into the swim, as she has, and keep her head above water all the time? How did she do it?”

“She answered that herself; by learning right along,” Rex Powell commented quietly, but he did not share the medical expert’s amusement, and Cliff observed:

“Our little Ethel has been learning more than so¬ cial aquatics! If I’m any judge of toy dogs that abominable Pekinese is worth a cool thousand or so, and that corsage cluster rather outshines Henry’s modest arbutus. I fancy she has added more than a chaperone to her train.”

“You don’t mean a john!” Phil’s jaw dropped. “It’s a complication of course.” Lucian Baynes shook his head. “We might have expected it before this, however. Ethel is so amazingly efficient that we have overlooked her quite obvious attractions.”

“Some one else hasn’t, evidently.” George Roper was beginning when Rex interrupted.

“Nonsense!” His tone was sharp with unaccus¬ tomed asperity. “She’s only a child, with all a child’s adaptability and native resourcefulness, and there isn’t a trace of sentiment about her, thank heaven! Her life with petty crooks like Lefty Jane has left her sin¬ gularly unspoiled but it hasn’t tended to make her ex¬ actly romantic! We won’t have that to worry over!”

Lucian glanced at his clouded face and then swiftly at Cliff Nichols, but before any one spoke again Rex leaned forward and touched the invisible spring be¬ neath his desk. The dictaphone brought to them the sound of the closing front door and then a voice, shaking but clear and distinct.

“The president of The Shadowers—is he here? I have an appointment made half an hour ago by ’phone.”

“ ‘An appointment?’ ” Ethel Jepson repeated in very sweet but cool tones. “The members of the firm are in conference for the moment. Er—what name, please?”

There was concrete evidence that she had not for¬ gotten the former precedure of temporizing with a new client while she transmitted her personal impres¬ sion of him to her waiting employers, for the faint clicking had recommenced and the ribbon of paper was unwinding itself through the slot once more. It’s message was not, however, in the vernacular of earlier days.

“ ‘Stunning looking chap, smart dinner clothes, light top coat, London label in hat, well bred but dread¬ fully excited, wait.’ ” Cliff read the strip he had hastened to tear off and then raised whimsical eyes. “Our Ethel is learning punctuation but she can’t take the time for capitals.”

Rex shrugged with an impatient gesture and the visitor’s reply reached them in a slightly more even tone.

“I prefer, under the circumstances, to give that only to the person I have come to see.”

“That is unfortunate.” There was just the right shade of impersonality in Ethel’s response. “Per¬ haps you didn’t know, but it is a rule of the office to receive no one without a card.”

“I’ve brought one.” The man spoke with abrupt capitulation, and Cliff turned back to the panel, for the ticker was sending forth its message again.

“Can’t hold him much longer, keeps looking back at door as if expecting somebody to follow, name on card ‘Richard Monckton.’ ”

Cliff’s voice dropped oddly as he uttered the last words and Lucian frowned, but Rex shook his head in quick dissent. To Henry, George and Phil the name patently meant nothing.

“I have had no instructions to announce you, Mr. Monckton. Is the matter pressing?” Ethel asked with well-assumed hesitation.

“It is—vital!” The voice grew suddenly hoarse as it had over the wire an hour before. “I’ve got to see some one in authority here without a moment’s delay! The chap I spoke to, if you will be good enough to take me to him.”

“Just a minute, Mr. Monckton.”

The ticker sounded briefly once more, however, and the fragment of paper which Cliff tore off and laid be¬ fore his companions bore just five words:

‘Shot to pieces, will bolt.’

They had barely read the terse warning when the telephone at Rex’s elbow buzzed, and he took the re¬ ceiver off the hook in order to reply, although Ethel’s tones came to them all by means of the dictaphone.

“Mr. Powell, have you an appointment with a Mr. Richard Monckton?”

“If that is the gentleman who telephoned half an hour ago,” Rex responded, “I shall be disengaged in a minute. Ask Mr. Monckton to wait and I will ring.”

His confreres were familiar with their chief’s meth¬ ods, of which they had spoken, of creating a light¬ ning change in the atmosphere of the consulting room to bring ease and reassurance to their prospective clients, but they were not wholly prepared for the present metamorphosis.

The leather cover was stripped from the table, and upon the ancient wood of its top were placed two colonial candelabra, a pewter tobacco jar and a colos¬ sal inkwell of beaten brass; heavy cushions of dull, crimson plush gave the chairs a somewhat churchly dignity and the turn of a knob beside each bookcase caused a curtain of diaphanous, diamond-checkered material to drop between the glass and the rows of volumes within, to give the effect of rich leading. As a note of seeming incongruity, Rex brought from be¬ hind the screen of Spanish leather a golf bag, several rifles and an armful of fishing rods, which he stacked in different angles of the panelled wall, and a touch of the switch extinguished the indirect lighting, flood¬ ing the room instead with the deep glow of bridge lamps which were hastily brought forward to com¬ plete the illusion.

“I fancied so.” Lucian nodded reminiscently.

“Colonial relics, modern luxury, golf, hunting, fish¬ ing—!” George gazed about him bewilderedly, and Phil Howe demanded:

“Who is this guy, anyway?”

“I think we’re ready to receive him now.” Rex seemed not to have heard the question. “You boys go into your own rooms and turn on the dictaphones. If there is anything special in any of your lines be ready for the buzzer.” He took up the receiver once more. “Miss Jepson, I’ll see Mr. Monckton now.”

The other panels closed as that leading into the anteroom opened and a young man appeared. He was undeniably good-looking, as Ethel had commented, and his distinguished appearance was heightened not so much by his faultless attire as by the natural poise of the trained athlete, despite the supreme agitation he was obviously trying to control. His blue eyes were well spaced above a short, straight nose and his slightly full lips and square, clean-cut jaw were firm, yet now the eyes were blood-shot, and the faint lines beneath them and from nostrils to the corners of the mouth were deeply accentuated. He halted, his gaze sweeping the room, and a look of unconscious grati¬ fication and approval displaced for a moment the hunted, harassed expression as he noted the air of quiet luxury and the careless evidence of tastes akin to his own.