A curtain hung
perhaps a third of the way across the study door, tempering the light in
the hall; and the broad shoulders of the cabby obstructed the remainder of
the opening.
It was a chance. She poised herself on tiptoe, half undecided, and--the
rustling of paper as O'Hagan opened the parcel afforded her an opportunity
to escape, by drowning the noise of her movements.
For two eternal seconds she was edging stealthily down toward the outer
door; then, in no time at all, found herself on the landing
and--confronted by a fresh complication, one unforeseen: how to leave the
house without being observed, stopped, and perhaps detained until too
late? There would be men at the door, beyond doubt; possibly police,
stationed there to arrest all persons attempting to leave....
No time for weighing chances. The choice of two alternatives lay before
her: either to return to the alcove or to seek safety in the darkness of
the upper floors--untenanted, as she had been at pains to determine. The
latter seemed by far the better, the less dangerous, course to pursue. And
at once she took it.
There was no light on the first-floor landing--it having presumably been
extinguished by the janitor early in the evening. Only a feeble twilight
obtained there, in part a reflected glow from the entrance hall, partly
thin and diffused rays escaping from Maitland's study. So it was that the
first few steps upward took the girl into darkness so close and unrelieved
as to seem almost palpable.
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