Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/323

 was still ahead of her. To emerge head down from a transom seven feet high is no easy matter. But to do this encumbered with skirts, half choked with dust and in utter darkness, takes unto itself the nature of both an exercise in audacity and an adventure in acrobatics.

But Sadie knew her possibilities. As she slowly and silently vermiculated over the dust-covered door-lintel she retained her hold on the cotton rope. She emerged, head down, until her knees were free of the cross-bar. Then, pivoting on the taut rope, she swung about with a cat-like twist of the body, describing an aerial cart-wheel and dropping quietly if a little dazed on the carpeted floor of the hall. She was on her feet in a moment, untying her rocker-rod from the rope-end. The latter she tossed lightly back through the open transom. Then with her rod she pushed away the piece of bamboo holding up the hinged panel, the latter swinging back into place as the bamboo stick dropped back into the room from which she had escaped.

Then the girl turned and stood with her back to the door, straining her eyes through the darkness, with her aural nerves acutely alert, with even her moist skin-surfaces sensitized to atmospheric