" The
urchin led him across the bridge and up to the door of the inn.
An undersized, yellow-faced man, wearing neither collar nor tie,
came to the door as they approached. Although of short stature,
he was immensely broad with singularly long arms. Altogether he
had something of the figure of a gorilla, Desmond thought on
looking at him.
The man put a finger up and touched his forelock.
"Madame Le Bon is upstairs waiting for you!" he said in a nasal
voice which Desmond recognized as that he had heard on the
telephone. "Please to follow me!"
He led the way across a long low tap-room through a door and past
the open trap-door of a cellar to a staircase. On the first
landing, lit by a window looking out on a dreary expanse of fen,
he halted Desmond.
"That's her room," he said, pointing to a door opposite the head
of the staircase, half a dozen steps up, and so saying, the
yellow-faced man walked quickly downstairs and left him. Desmond
heard his feet echo on the staircase and the door of the tap-room
slam.
He hesitated a moment. What if this were a trap? Suppose
Mortimer, growing suspicious, had made use of Nur-el-Din to lure
him to an ambush in this lonely place? Why the devil hadn't he
brought a revolver with him?
Then Desmond's Irish blood came to his rescue.
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