Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/334

 They could advance, she knew, only by way of the door behind which she stood. So she carefully wheeled about the roll-top desk and in front of it placed the chairs which stood in the room.

From this ambuscade, she felt, she could at least keep things interesting, as long as her cartridge-clips held out, at any rate. For, this time, she knew, she could expect no quarter from them. She was not ignorant of Keudell's record and his character. He would never give her another chance.

She waited with the calmness of the unimaginative young animal that she was, still further narcotized by sheer physical weariness. She waited with her eyes on the locked door and her pistol in her hand. She even forgot her thirst. One determined assault on those panels, she knew, would easily carry them away. So she decided that it would be better, on the whole, to have the light turned off.

She reached out for the switch. As she did so her eyes fell on the box of cigarettes, A wayward temptation to take one of them up and light it possessed her. But the business on hand, she remembered, was too serious for trifling. So she switched out the light and stood in the darkness, waiting.