It was one of those curious nights when John Barleycorn chose to be
kind--when mind and body stayed alert and keen. Carl lazily poured
some whiskey in the fire and watched the flame burn blue. He could not
rid his mind of the doctor's farm and the girl in Vermont.
Again the wind shook the farmhouse and danced and howled to its crazy
castanetting. There was a creak in the hallway beyond. Last night,
too, when he had been talking to Wherry, there had been such a creak
and for the moment, he recalled vividly, there had been no wind. Then,
disturbed by Dick's utter collapse, he had carelessly dismissed it.
Now with his brain dangerously edged by the whiskey and his mind
brooding intently over a series of mysterious and sinister adventures
which had enlivened his summer, he rose and stealing catlike to the
door, flung it suddenly back.
Kronberg, his dark, thin-lipped face ashen, fell headlong into the room
with a revolver in his hand.
With the tigerish agility which had served him many a time before Carl
leaped for the revolver and smiling with satanic interest leveled it at
the man at his feet.
"So," said he softly, "you, too, are a link in the chain. Get up!"
Sullenly Kronberg obeyed.
"If you are a good shot," commented Carl coolly, "the bullet you sent
from this doorway would have gone through my head.
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