He pulled out his pistol, which he had replaced in his
pocket, backed against the wall, and stood there prepared to sell
his life dearly.
The door opened.
One reads of desperate experiences ageing people in a single
night. His present predicament aged Mr Pickering in a single
minute. In the brief interval of time between the opening of the
door and the moment when a voice outside began to speak he became
a full thirty years older. His boyish ardour slipped from him, and
he was once more the Dudley Pickering whom the world knew, the
staid and respectable middle-aged man of affairs, who would have
given a million dollars not to have got himself mixed up in this
deplorable business.
And then the voice spoke.
'I'll light the lamp,' it said; and with an overpowering feeling
of relief Mr Pickering recognized it as Lord Wetherby's. A moment
later the temperamental peer's dapper figure became visible in
silhouette against a background of pale light.
'Ah-hum!' said Mr Pickering.
The effect on Lord Wetherby was remarkable. To hear some one clear
his throat at the back of a dark room, where there should
rightfully be no throat to be cleared, would cause even your man
of stolid habit a passing thrill. The thing got right in among
Lord Wetherby's highly sensitive ganglions like an earthquake.
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