The Profiteers

Wingate, notwithstanding his iron nerve, awoke with a start, in the grey of the following morning, to find his heart pounding against his ribs and a chill sense of horror stealing into his brain. Nothing had happened or was happening except that one cry, –the low, awful cry of a man in agony. He sat up, switched on the electric light by his side and gazed at the round table, his fingers clenched around the butt of his pistol. Dredlinton, from whom had come the sound, had fallen with his head and shoulders upon the table. His face was invisible, only there crept from his hidden lips a faint repetition of the cry, –the hideous sob, it might have been, as of a spirit descending into hel