Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/208

 she concluded, she might be able to use her rod as a jimmy. But this, she soon saw, was hopeless, as the sheet-iron covering gave her no opening and the necessity for silence limited her to only prying and levering movements. So she directed her attention next to the walls. These she found, once she had scratched away the burlap and plaster, to be of brickwork. And she promptly realized that it would take her all night to burrow through a barrier so formidable.

Her last resource, accordingly, was the floor. This was covered by a well-worn Wilton carpet securely tacked in place. So it took several minutes' work with her rod to free even one corner of this carpet. She worked slowly and cautiously, for she found the dust disagreeable, and she worked silently because she wanted no betrayal of her movements.

When she had two sides of the carpet free of tacks she rolled it carefully back, revealing a dust-covered hardwood floor not at all to her liking. But near the center of this floor, she saw, was a break in the solid boarding, apparently marking the spot where a pipe-flue or a ventilator had once stood. It had been neatly and firmly patched, however, with short boards matching the rest of the