Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/383

 floor. But in reality she awaited no signal. She saw the still open door and bolted for it.

She felt, all along, that it was absurd, as absurd and hopeless as her only too obvious lie about the stolen gun charts being in the bureau drawer. But any movement, however foolish and futile, was now; better than mere passivity. To remain longer quiescent was out of the question. Even a rat, she reminded herself, would not die meekly in its corner.

She braced herself, mentally, for some indeterminate sense of bodily shock, for she knew that before she could reach and round that open door the leveled revolver in Keudell's hand would be following her movements. Yet the mere leap of mind from one plane of thought to another, the mere act of directing that revolver barrel on her body, involved at least a ponderable space of time. There would be a precious second or two, she knew, before Keudell could cover her. And no street-cat could have been more agile than that white-faced girl who knew she was running for her life.

She did not reach the door before the shot rang out. But she knew, as she caught at the frame-work and swung about into the hall, that the bullet had failed to reach her, firmly as her body had been