“Th’ Big Gun.... You better watch your step.... Mar—”
Quarrier found himself in a sort of corridor, at the far end of which proceeded the voices. It had all been done in the dark, so to speak. The taxi, that driver with the face familiar and yet unfamiliar, the attack, and now this. But time pressed. Why they had not murdered him out of hand he did not pause to consider; he knew only that Marston—and he was certain that it was Marston’s hand that had been in it—would, with a clear field, be at the hiding-place of those documents. Even now, doubtless, he was there.
Quarrier felt mechanically for his pistol; and then his hand dropped hopelessly as he remembered that he was weaponless.
He listened tensely, holding his breath, as the voices receded—or, rather, one of them; he could hear the other following the departing man with his complaints.
Evidently they had left a guard of two. One of them was going; the other left behind, and not especially delighted with his job.
An abrupt turn of the long hallway brought this man suddenly into plain view.
Quarrier blinked in the glare from the single incandescent, flattening himself against the wall; then, with a pantherish pace, he had covered the intervening space in three lunging strides.
The man, a broad fellow with a seamed, lead-colored countenance, turned his head; his mouth opened, his hand going to his pocket with a lightning stab of the blunt, hairy fingers.
But Quarrier had wasted no time. Even as the giant reached for his gun Quarrier’s fist swung in a short arc, and there was power in it. The blow, traveling a scant six inches, crashed full on the point; the thick-set man, his eyes glazing, swayed, slipped, fell in an aimless huddle.
“Well—a knockout!” panted Quarrier, reaching for the pistol.