Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/324

, and with nostrils distended, like a winded moose sniffing for some hint of its pursuers.

She could hear and see nothing. But her over-delicate olfactory nerves warned her of the imminence of others. The signs of this were devious and diffused. And faint but unmistakable on the musty air floated the smell of tobacco-smoke. For once in her life she found that aroma anything but tranquilizing. Her mouth was dry, and more than ever the thought of long and cooling draughts appealed to her. When she got to a water-tap, she told herself, she would drink like a camel.

She was not content, however, to remain long inactive. So with one hand extended she advanced slowly and noiselessly through the darkness, stopping at every step or two to listen and then going on again. The absence of both sound and light tended to disturb her. It left every doorway an imminent menace and every corner a possible ambush. Her groping fingers came in contact with a door-frame, yet she was afraid to turn the knob. Darkness had imposed on her its accumulation of uncertainties. She even began to entertain exaggerated ideas of distances, imagining that she had