Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/245



lay stretched out along his counter-top, carefully considering his predicament. Steadily, from the next room, came the consoling clank and pound of the bed press. Occasionally from the shooting-gallery in the adjoining building crept the thin and muffled bark of the target-rifles. Now and then, too, he could hear the faint drone of a steamer whistle somewhere out on the East River. But beyond this narrow cantata of noises no enlightening sounds came to him.

He waited a few minutes, to make sure he was not being watched. Then he slipped quietly from the counter-top, walked noiselessly to the door, and cautiously turned the knob. That door, as he already knew, was locked.

He wheeled slowly about, studying the narrow chamber in which he found himself a prisoner. High up in the brick wall at the rear was a two-foot window, guarded with bar-iron sunk In the masonry. A few feet beyond this opening he could see a white-washed plane of unbroken brick, but nothing else.

Between him and the printing-room stood a wooden partition of unpainted matched pine. Here and there along cracks in the boards he could make out the glimmer of light, presumably from an electric bulb swung