Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/102

 on her aim. But the lurching struggles of the man holding her had brought his right leg forward so that it fell within her line of vision at the same moment that her exhausted right hand went down. Instinctively she pulled the trigger, even while the garroting arm about her throat constricted until her very breath of life was shut off.

She had neither the time nor the strength for a second shot, for that strangle-hold was too much for her, stopping as it did her very power of breathing, clamping close about under her chin until she could feel the very cartilage of her neck crackle.

It was at the moment that this vise-like clutch seemed unendurable that she realized her shot had not gone wide. For the next moment the pressure relaxed, the arm about her throat fell slowly away and the hairy figure so close behind her fell as slowly to the ground.

She staggered back against the wall, gaping at the fallen man and gasping for breath. She stared down at his ludicrously exposed white sock and the leather shoe-top already reddened with blood. She saw that she had shot him somewhere below the knee. Yet that fact did not altogether disturb her. She was not thinking of others, but of herself.