Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/307

 stairs, and he could not hear her in the kitchen, he dropped the other shoe as noisily when he got it off. Then he stripped to his undershirt and trousers, blew out the light, threw himself heavily on the bed in the hope that its creaking would be audible, and lay on his back, listening.

He listened and listened, but he could hear nothing, except the incessant stridulant drone of insect mechanisms out-of-doors.

He sat up to look out the window, and there was nothing to be seen but leaves and moonlight.

He crawled to the sill in the hope that there might be the roof of a lean-to below the window. There was none. And the moon was so bright that he could not have climbed out with any safety in any case. And there would be the dog to betray him, even if there had been no moon.

He got his little electric lamp from his hip-pocket and tiptoed to the stairs. A cautious flash showed him the door below him. He