Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/178

 crowd close in under the velour hanging and stand there holding his breath. There had come to him the distinct sound of a door opening and closing again, the fall of quick steps along the floor, the rustle of drapery, and the tap of hurrying heels on the polished hardwood treads of the stairway. A moment later he heard the snap of a switch. He could tell, even from his hiding-place, that the upper hall had been lighted.

Kestner waited a moment and then slipped quietly out from under his covering. He crept forward to the foot of the stairway, keeping close to the shadowy wainscoting. Then he peered up the stairs, to where the light shone strongest.

There, in front of the great old-fashioned grandfather's clock, he saw Sadie Wimpel. She had swung open the clock-door and had dropped on one knee before the large time-piece. Kestner could see her as she reached carefully into the clock, with one hand, and he knew that she had either just concealed something in that untoward hiding-place or had just taken something from it.

Kestner watched her as she rose to her feet, dusted her finger-tips by brushing them lightly together, and then carefully closed the clock-door. Then she looked quickly to the right and the left, to where the divided stairway led to the floor above. Apparently satisfied that she had been quite unobserved from that quarter, she stepped forward and turned out the light at the wall-switch on the landing.

Kestner stood listening as she made her way on up the stairs and deeper into the house. He heard a door open and close and the sound of steps and another