Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/313

 was a broken rocking-chair and an overturned packing-case still half filled with moldy-looking books. On the other side was a bamboo table, a rolled-up hair mattress and a couple of cardboard hat-boxes. On the table stood a faded and wilted palm in a flat majolica vase. This palm, apparently unwatered for months, had long since died and dried up. Along the outer wall was a bamboo book-shelf filled with dust-covered magazines. The floor was painted and without a carpet. A solitary and unshaded electric bulb had been left burning, presumably for the purpose of some future spying on her.

Sadie, viewing the room with studious eyes, acknowledged to herself that it was anything but inspiriting.

Then she directed her thoughts back to the bonds which held her a prisoner. She saw, by the expedient of suddenly kicking up her heels, that a white cotton rope reinforced by a trunk-strap held her ankles together. It was the same kind of rope, she discovered, that was used for many a housetop clothes-line. And judging from the way it swathed and circled her limbs, there had been an ample supply of it. Yet for several minutes she worked doggedly and valiantly at these bonds, trying first to