Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/88

 knob, and as he stepped guardedly out and closed the door behind him.

Then she stood with her lips slightly parted and her blue-stenciled eyes very wide. For the moment that door had closed there came to her ear the sounds of a sudden struggle, a muffled thud of feet, vague concussions of the flooring, faint gasps and grunts, telling of some brief and wordless struggle taking place in the hallway immediately outside that door which had so recently opened and closed.

Sadie did not like those sounds. They reminded her of earlier and less equable days. They sent a thousand mouse-feet of alarm scampering up her spinal column. But they also brought back to her a sort of second wind of audacity. Her hand was quite steady as she opened her hand-bag and took Wilsnach's revolver from its hiding-place there. Quite steady, too, was her tread as she advanced to the closed door, listened there and then pressed a straining ear against the dark panel, as Dorgan himself had done.

She could hear nothing more. All movement, apparently, had ceased. But she waited, listening intently. The silence remained unbroken. The quietness of that house of mystery no longer