Page:Spider Boy (1928).pdf/77

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safed to St. Anthony, and as such, fortunately unreal. He would awaken presently to find himself in bed after a bad period of delirium, or, in case he failed to rise to the surface the third time, he would awaken in heaven or on some other mystic plane where he would at least be free of the nightmare in which Imperia Starling and Herbert Ringrose played such dominant rôles. Attempting then, somewhat vainly, to be sure, to console himself with these and other equally childish sophistries, he had been thrown into a new state of terror by a knock at the door. As he did not reply, going so far, indeed, as to hold his breath the more effectually to conceal his presence, despite the fact that the moving train was making as much noise as moving trains usually do, the knock was repeated, this time more definitely, a longer knock, a more determined knock, a louder knock, which resolutely announced that the knocker had made up his or her mind to be answered no matter how recalcitrant the knockee might prove. Ambrose, therefore, groaned, Come in.

The door immediately had swung open and whatever fearful picture his imagination had conjured up was more than fulfilled by the actuality framed in the doorway. There stood the pretty girl of the observation car, the forward flapper who had dropped