“Now you’d better tell me all you know,” I advised her.
“What’ll you do, if I don’t?”
“You’ll not get out of this!” I promised her. “Not out of this!”
Nothing yet had really happened in “this”; we’d discovered nothing actual but those slotted pipes. Not even the guinea pigs had been killed yet; but the certainty of the plot, which had convinced Teverson too, turned me sick when I thought of it. And this girl, whom I held, was in the scheme.
True, she had stopped, on a lower floor, to inquire for Teverson; but that proved nothing in her favor. I thought how I’d trusted her before and how I’d been hit on the back of the head when I went to that meeting place where I was to have my chance to argue with her, alone.
I held to her; and she gazed at me and I felt her breathing slowly and deeply. The little clock on the desk near us turned to eleven; and we both heard steps and talk in the hall.
“What are they doing?” she asked me.
I opened our door; and we both saw two men, whose figures looked like Weston and Reed. They had hooded affairs, of gas-mask pattern over their heads, and they were at the door of the directors’ room.
“Don’t go in!” Doris cried to them. “No mask’s any good! Don’t let them in!” she cried to me.
Apparently they did not hear and Doris jerked toward them. I held her and shoved her back of me. “Don’t go in, Reed!” I called and at that moment, though I did not know it, I must have let Doris go.