Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/212

 cleared away over a foot and a half of the laths and plaster between the two joists.

She emptied the umbrella of its debris, closed it and carefully drew it up through the aperture. Then she silently and cautiously moved the heavy leather couch over against the opening. She next took up the pair of old tapestry window curtains and tied and twisted and knotted them together. One end of this roughly improvised scaling-ladder she tied to the nearest couch-leg, the other end she lowered into the darkness of the room beneath her.

She kneeled over this little well of darkness again, listening intently. Then she rose to her feet, took up her wrap and gloves, gave one final look about her disordered prison and carefully switched off the light. Then, holding her wrap in her teeth, she sat down on the floor and gathered her skirts close about her knees, letting her slippered feet protrude through the ceiling-hole. The next moment she was lowering herself slowly and cautiously down through this hole.

It was not an easy thing to do. But Sadie was youthful and she was also muscular. She had need, none the less, of all the strength of her lithe young body as she lowered herself, hand by hand and inch