A dim, shapeless figure in the black of the doorway. The scrabbling of fingers on the wall.
"Where are you, dammit?" said the voice, apparently addressing the electric-light switch.
Jill shrank back, desperate fingers pressing deep into the back of an arm-chair. Light flashed from the wall at her side. And there, in the doorway, stood Wally Mason in his shirt-sleeves.
CHAPTER XIII
THE AMBASSADOR ARRIVES
I
In these days of rapid movement, when existence has become little more than a series of shocks of varying intensity, astonishment is the shortest-lived of all the emotions. There was an instant in which Jill looked at Wally and Wally at Jill with the eye of total amazement, and then, almost simultaneously, each began—the process was subconscious—to regard this meeting not as an isolated and inexplicable event, but as something resulting from a perfectly logical chain of circumstances.
"Hullo!" said Wally.
"Hullo!" said Jill.