Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/157

 enemy, Keudell himself flung the chair with all his force.

Dorgan's howl, half of anger and half of pain, as the chair-back struck against his hip, was brute-like and throaty and singularly suggestive of the bleat of a stock-yards calf.

But Sadie did not wait for more. She swung about and dove through the curtains of her cabinet-front. Her first impulse was to find and possess herself of the fallen revolver. But as she stood staring about at the back of her cabinet she saw the door so invitingly confronting her. At the same time she realized that her flight remained unobserved by the two combatants. And a natural and instinctive propulsion toward escape asserted itself.

She opened the door and slipped through it into the shadowy back hallway, where she could still hear the muffled crash of furniture and the thud of stamping feet. But Sadie no longer hesitated. Her passion to reach the open was now an all-consuming one. She was even vaguely conscious, as she darted for the front of the house, of a gaunt and towering figure bound close to the spindles of the stair-banister. She was dimly aware that this dusky figure was that of her own attendant, Zuleika, and