Page:Harold Macgrath--The girl in his house.djvu/123

 half of his face, obeyed—less in terror than in fascination-and silently drew back from a box he had withdrawn from the safe. There was enough illumination from his own upstanding torch to outline her face and bring out the gorgeous patterns on her kimono.

"Hold your hands out in front of you!"

Again the man obeyed.

"Come out. Now walk toward those stairs, and don't lower your arms."

At the head of the stairs the burglar was ordered to march down, warned that the slightest suspicious movement would have serious results for him. She wondered if the man understood voices. Hers wasn't anything like her own; it was dry and thin and seemed to come out of nowhere, certainly not her throat. She kept the light of her torch focused squarely upon his back.

Now these stairs were the old-fashioned, circular kind. She did not observe that the man was quietly taking two steps to her one. As he reached the beginning of the lower curve he made a swift break for liberty. Wide-eyed, she fired. The shock of the explosion caused her to drop the torch.