The keys were not on the table, as he had expected. They must have fallen to the floor. He stooped, crawled under the table, turning the light this way and that, growing more perturbed. He was on his knees, groping along the wall, when he half heard something like a light step. Before he could rise, a brighter flash light than his own blinded him with its blaze in his face.
For a moment he crouched there, paralyzed with the shock and the terror. He could half see the dim figure behind that white beam. He expected a threat, or a bullet, but he heard nothing except a sound like a faint moaning.
Then with the courage of despair he turned his own light on the antagonist.
Eva Morrison stood there, in a long blue dressing gown, one sleeve falling back from the arm that held the light, the other hand holding a little shiny revolver half hidden in the folds of the gown. The two light rays crossed like swords between them; the girl’s face looked deathly pale, and he heard, tongue-tied himself, again that faint moaning from her lips.
“You! You!” she whispered, and the horror and amazement in her tone were echoes of Lang’s own emotions.
CHAPTER VII
HER FATHER
The flash light dropped out of Lang’s hand. The girl’s light shifted; he heard a quick movement, the scrape of a match, and the yellow glow of a lamp shone out. She set it on the kitchen table, and stood gazing at him, still amazed, as if beyond speech.
“Is it possibly you, Doctor Lang?” she said unsteadily. “I found—I thought—— Oh, what does this mean? Are you insane?”
“I came back for the keys,” Lang stammered. It was all he could think of to say. He tried to pull himself together, and got upon his feet. What was she doing here, for that matter, in Rockett’s house?
“It’s all a mistake,” he tried to explain. “Rockett himself told me to come here—his last words. It wasn’t for myself. The creditors’ money——”