For a little while they stood tense and watchful, but when nothing happened, they relaxed a trifle. The photographer lit another cigarette. Good sat down, but at a glare from the reporter, stood up again. The muffled sound of voices came to them from the other room, occasionally rising in pitch, as if in argument, though no words could be distinguished.
They remained thus for what seemed an eternity. Once Good looked at his watch. It was half past nine. The voices still rose and fell on the other side of the door. Once Sato yawned, and changed his flash pistol from one hand to the other. Suddenly Furniss turned from the keyhole, his eyes ablaze, and his lips silently formed the warning. Good, his heart thumping uncontrollably, the sense of something terrible impending, more acute than ever, put his hand on the doorknob. The photographer fingered his shutter release....
Good never afterward could tell exactly how it all happened. He never could see in his mind's eye the signal from Furniss. Yet he must have seen it, else the door would never have been opened.
All he knew at the moment, and all he could ever remember, was a sudden blinding flash of light, with a dull roar, and he was staring past a roomful of men straight into the eyes of—Judge Wolcott. They were wide with recognition and helpless terror.
Then he was conscious of a rush of scurrying feet, and a large man pushing over a chair in front—making for him.
It flashed over him that this was Hennessy, acting as if the whole thing had been planned and rehearsed. He laughed unconsciously, as if in a dream. It had been rehearsed. As the big man reached the threshold, his eyes flaming, his nostrils dilated, his jaw open, like some mad bull, Good's arm straightened mechanically. The blazing eyes and red nostrils vanished, and his knuckles hurt him vaguely. Then the lights went out in the other room, and he made for the door. He felt sick to his stomach when he reached the street, and something seemed to press on his temples till he wanted to scream.
But the horrible feeling of dread had vanished. He knew now what he had feared. And he understood the light in Furniss' eyes. For a moment he stood on the street-corner, swaying like a drunken man, before his shoulders straightened and his jaw set, and he made for a taxi.
The office was filled with suppressed excitement when he reached it. Bassett was chewing one of his interminable cigars, but the gleam in his eyes betokened the fires in his soul. Bassett wanted very much to get on the table and howl, but had anyone even so much as suspected that he was not ice, he would never have recovered from the humiliation.
"Great stuff," he said with exaggerated passiveness. "First galleys will be up soon. Furniss had most of the story written before he pulled the thing off. Great lad, Furniss."
But Good, his face grey, the skin, like old parchment, drawn tight to bursting over his high cheek bones, said never a word. He sank into a chair, staring straight before him.