WHO had escaped? Someone--man or woman; rather some THING, which, yellow
handed, had sought to murder him!
Max ran across to the second trap and looked down at the woman whom he
knew, beyond doubt, to be Mrs. Leroux. She lay in her death-like trance,
unmoved.
Strung up to uttermost tension, he looked down at her and
listened--listened, intently.
Above the fumes of the apartment in which the woman lay, a stifling odor
of roses was clearly perceptible. The whole place was tropically hot.
Not a sound, save the creaking of the shelf beneath him, broke the heavy
stillness.
XXXIX
THE LABYRINTH
Feverishly, Max clutched at the last three books upon the shelf
adjoining the gap. Of these, the center volume, a work bound in yellow
calf and bearing no title, proved to be irremovable; right and left it
could be inclined, but not moved outward. It masked the lever handle of
the door!
But that door was locked.
Max, with upraised arms, swept the perspiration from his brows and eyes;
he leant dizzily up against the door which defied him; his mind was
working with febrile rapidity. He placed the pistol in his pocket,
and, recrossing the room, mounted up again upon the shelves, and crept
through into the apartment beyond, from which the yellow hand had
protruded.
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