"Luck!" Nat seized his hat and began to turn off the lights. "It's more luck than I thought there was in the whole world. Come along."
"Where are you going?"
"First, to see Lockwood and have it out with him."
"No, you aren't," Kellogg laughed as Nat locked the door. "You're going to leave Lockwood to me; I'll manage to ease his mind. You've got infinitely more important matters to attend to—and the sooner you find her, the better, Nat!"
[ XXIII ]
THE RAINBOW'S END
The air was heavy with moisture and very still and warm; a heady fragrance of precocious blooms flavoured the air, vying with the scent of rain. The silence was profound, but shaken now and then by a grumble of distant thunder. The world hung breathless on the issue of the night.
Since evenfall a wall of cloud, massive and portentous, had been climbing up over the western hills, slowly but with ominous steadiness obscuring the moon-swept sky with its far, pale wreaths of stars, blotting it out with monstrous folds and convolutions of impenetrable purple-black. Along its crest fire played like swords in the sunlight, and now and again sheeted flame lightened the monstrous expanse so that it glowed with the pale phosphorescence of a summer sea.
As Duncan hurried homeward over sidewalks chequered in silver and ink, the advance of the cloud army seemed to become accelerated. With increasing frequency gusts of air set the trees a-shiver until their sibilant whispers of warning filled the valley. The rolling of the thunder grew more sharp, more instant upon the flashes.... When there was no wind the air seemed to quiver with terror—as a dog cringes to the whip....
But of this Duncan was barely conscious.