Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/162

 All she asked was to reach that corner without interruption. Once she was there, she knew, and once her precious packet was dropped within its protecting sheet-iron sanctuary, she did not much care what happened. So she ran now as she never ran before.

Her foot turned as she took the muddy curb on the run, and she went down and slithered across the wet pavement like a base-runner charging for third. But that movement brought her body into contact with the box-pillar. At the same instant that she struggled to her knees she drew the packet from its hiding-place. The next moment she had staggered to her feet and shoved the precious packet into the narrow maw of the box itself, which seemed to swallow it up like a sea-lion swallowing a fish-tail. And that, she knew, was the end of her battle.

She felt the sudden weight of a hand on her shoulder. It was more a blow than a clutch, and she did not have strength enough to resist its force. So she once more subsided to the wet pavement, going down as quietly and invertebrate as a straw-stuffed dummy, but still clinging stubbornly to the painted box-pillar with her wet arms. As she clung there, however, she threw back her head and