Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/297

 her. She had, in fact, long since lost all sense of time and direction. Even their movements of the passing moment became more or less indistinct to her. She was vaguely conscious of the fact that they had pulled up before a forbidding-looking house and the two men were half-lifting her down out of the cab. The street, as she later recalled it, seemed deserted. But her companions gave her little time for observation. They walked, one on each side of her, holding her up by the arm-pits. The cab moved on, she remembered, as they hurried her in toward the house-door, which swung open with a signal, seeming to suck them in like a bivalve. Then the double-doors closed behind her, and the sound of their closing seemed like the thud of a dead- fall, like the double snap of a trap.

They crossed a hallway and went stumblingly up a stairway, through unbroken darkness. They went three abreast, the men feeling their way as they mounted. At the top of the stairs, after taking a turn, the smaller man stopped and pushed a wall-button. This flooded the upper hallway with light. Then they moved on to a closed door. This the bigger man opened with his left hand.

They stepped into a room papered with