Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/256

 herself on sentry duty at her slightly opened door. Then, growing bolder, she ventured into the many-odored hallway and explored it from end to end. A study of the room-numbers as she did so convinced her of the fact that the figures which she had seen opposite the name of Strasser on the dog-eared register implied he had been given a room on the floor below.

So she returned to her quarters, got her suit-case and her door-key and went boldly down to the office. There she demanded a larger room. She was proffered one with a bath, but it would cost her a dollar more. Sadie, when she learned this was on the second floor, took it without hesitation. She even went so far as to allay official suspicion by paying for it in advance.

Yet she knew, as she made her way up to this room, that the hardest part of her work was still ahead of her. She knew, as she took off her gloves and her absurd bunch of hothouse violets, that she could not expect luck to come her way twice in the same morning.

Her success, she decided, would have to depend on her own initiative. So she waited beside her slightly opened door, as patient as a farm-collie