Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/214

 there she put down her wrap, leaving it close beside the baseboard. Then she stood with her ear pressed flat against the door-panel.

As she listened there she could make out the faint but unmistakable sound of movements in some other part of the house. Just where those movements came from she could not tell. But they served as a warning that her way to the street might not be so clear as she had hoped.

She reached for the door-knob, and nursing it between firm Angers, turned it so guardedly that she succeeded in opening the door without ponderable sound. She swung it back with equal caution. Then, from some room farther along the darkened hall, she made out a vague ray of light. And the next moment she knew that it was from this room that she had caught the sound of some one moving cautiously about.

She tiptoed forward through the darkness, advancing on her shoeless feet without appreciable noise. She crept on until she came to the partly opened door itself. Without moving this door, she craned about and peered into the lighted room.

Then she held her breath again and stood without the shift or change of a muscle-flexor. For