The Door of Dread/Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
SADIE WIMPEL leaned back in the taxicab with a titter of care-free amusement. That worldly-wise young lady had long since learned to preserve an outward calm during her moments of inward tension. She experienced a desire to powder her nose, but there were reasons, she knew, why it would be better not to open up the hand-bag that lay on her lap. So she merely tittered again.
Her pertly insouciant face seemed to puzzle the man at her side. He studied the azure-lidded eyes and the rouge-brightened lips, studied them with a frank and open curiosity.
"Do you know where you're going?" he finally asked.
"Nope, but I'm on my way," was Sadie's blithely irresponsible reply.
For the second time the man beside her turned and studied her face. "You've certainly got nerve!" he slowly admitted.
"Yuh've gotta have nerve," conceded Sadie, "when yuh're scratchin' for yourself!"
"It ain't always easy scratching, is it?" he inquired, with a note of newly awakened hope in his voice.
"Not by a long shot!"
Her companion still hesitated. "Maybe I could make it easier for you," he finally suggested, though it took an effort for him to say the words.
"How?" languidly inquired the woman.
"I'll tell you that in about ten minutes' time." Then he added, in audible afterthought, "I guess I'm kind of up against it myself!"
He said no more, for the cab had stopped before a sinister-looking brownstone-fronted house with curtained windows and an iron-grilled door.
Sadie did not altogether like the appearance of that house. It looked like a place, she promptly concluded, where anything might happen. But she gave no sign of her secret misgivings.
"So here's where we wade in?" was her careless chirp as she stepped from the cab and followed the stranger up the brownstone steps, swinging her hand-bag as she went.
She watched him as he rang the bell, noting the two short and the two long pushes of his finger against the little button. Then she turned and glanced carelessly about at the house-front windows, making note of the fact that they were barred by a grille work which, if airily ornamental, was none the less substantial.
There was a wait of some time before the door itself was opened. It was opened by an oddly hirsute man in the service-coat of a butler. Sadie, whose quick eyes had taken him in at a glance, found him almost as unprepossessing as the house itself. He was a peculiarly large-boned and muscular-looking man, with his hairy skin singularly suggestive of a gorilla. His eyes seemed much too small for his heavy-jowled face, and about their haggard corners was a touch of animal-like pathos. Yet about those eyes was something sullen and reserved, something heavily taciturn, something which left the whole face as blank as the front of the curtain-windowed house itself.
"Where's the boss?" asked the man who had rung the bell.
Sadie watched both of them closely, determined that no secret message or sign should pass between them without her knowing it. But there seemed no break in the steely enmity of the servant's steely eyes.
"The boss is busy," he curtly announced.
"Well, he's expecting me," confidentially announced the caller.
"Both of you?" inquired the man inside the door, apparently without so much as a direct look at the woman with the carelessly swinging hand-bag.
"Yes, I guess we'll both come in." The words were spoken casually. But for all their quietness they seemed to carry the weight of an ultimatum.
The large-boned man at the door hesitated for one moment. Then he stepped back, watched the two visitors pass into the hallway and carefully and quietly closed the heavy door behind them.
"That's Canby," whispered Dorgan out of one corner of his mouth.
"Ain't he the sour old thing?" remarked Sadie Wimpel aloud.
To that alert-eyed young woman there seemed something ominous in the snap of the closing door's lock-bar. It seemed like the spring of a trap which might be cutting off all retreat. There was something dungeon-like in its very noisiness.
Her step, however, did not lose any of its carefree resilience as she followed her companion through the second door which the servant had opened for them. The questioning glance she turned on that companion, once the room-door had closed on them again, was as tranquil as ever.
"What kind of a dump's this, anyway?" she casually inquired.
The man, who had tiptoed to the door, made a gesture for silence. He pressed an ear against the dark-wooded panel and stood there listening. Then he turned and faced her. "You wait here for a minute or two," he said in a tone so low she could hardly catch the words.
She stood watching him as he silently and with the utmost precaution opened the door through which they had just passed. Then he closed it as quietly behind him.
Yet the moment that door was shut Sadie Wimpel's manner underwent a prompt and unequivocal change. She ran to the windows and found them locked and barred, as she had expected. Then she silently tried the second door at the back of the room. That, too, she found to be securely locked. Then she promptly peeled off her gloves and stowed them away in her hand-bag. She next gave the room itself her undivided attention, making note of the faded and shabby furniture, of the white mantel-piece with its silent ormolu clock, of the wires for the call and lighting circuits which ran along the broken picture-molding. Then she took one of the faded chairs, pushed it against the wall on the farther side of the room and quietly seated herself. Whatever happened, she preferred knowing there was nothing more than solid masonry at her back.
She was sitting there, with her knees crossed, when the door was once more silently opened and the man called Dorgan stepped back into the room. He came quietly, as though the house were the abode of sleepers who dare not be awakened. Yet Sadie noticed a change in his face. It looked more troubled. The skin had lost the last of its outdoor color. It looked oily, like the skin of a liner-stoker climbing deckward for a breath of air. She noticed, too, that he was breathing more quickly. And on the low forehead she could see a faint but unmistakable dewing of sweat-drops.
He did not turn and speak to her for several moments, apparently intent on making sure his return had been unobserved.
Then, still standing at the door, he turned and studied the young woman with the pert eyes and the carelessly swinging foot. That troubled look of his seemed one of appraisal.
"What's the game?" she quietly inquired.
He stepped forward as she spoke, crossing the room with the same studied quietness. Yet he shrugged a shoulder as he stood before her, as though to disguise the urgency, the apprehension, which he could not keep from his eyes. "I'm getting leery about these people here," he said in little more than a whisper. Then he stopped.
"What's the game?" repeated the patient-eyed woman.
"I've got certain documents these people want to get hold of. They want them bad, but they're going to pay me my price for 'em!"
"Your troubles is interestin'," quietly admitted Sadie. "But I came here to see the dame who said I'd crabbed her name."
The moist-browed man gave a gesture of impatience. Then he grew very grave.
"Lady, I'm going to be very honest with you. There's trouble ahead of me in this house, and I'm not ready to meet it. What I want to know is, are you game to help me out?"
He turned and looked at the door as though to make sure it was still closed.
"Whadda I have to do?" demanded Sadie. "And whadda I get out of it?"
"You play your cards right and you'll get about anything you want! Can I count on you?"
"Sure!" assented the woman. The man called Dorgan drew still closer to her.
"I've got an envelope of papers here that aren't worth a cent to anybody but the folks they're intended for. These people know I've got them, and they may get nasty over it. Can you stow them away until the coast is clear?"
"And then what?" asked Sadie, making an effort to control herself.
"Get away yourself as soon as the chance comes. Then meet me in your rooms, say to-morrow at five."
Sadie preferred to seem non-committal. "And how'll I get away?" she demanded, as she watched his hand insinuate itself in under his vest and unbutton a pocket-flap there.
"That's what I'm going out there to make sure of. Here's the stuff. Can you take care of it?"
"Sure!"
"Then quick!" prompted the other as he thrust a long manila envelope into Sadie's hand. She noticed, considerably to her disappointment, that it was sealed.
"Then you gaze the other way, son, until I stow it down in me lisle-thread safe," Sadie requested, turning her face so that he might not see the sudden flash of triumph which she was unable to hide. For she had every reason to believe that she had the plans of the secret submarine in her possession.
"Quick!" repeated the man watching the door.
There was a rustle of drapery, the snap of an elastic and a little sigh of relief. Then the two conspirators stood facing each other again.
"What's next?" inquired the young woman.
"These people won't imagine I've given you those papers," explained the man. "So they won't try to stop you, once you start for the street."
"Oh, I ain't hungerin' to linger round a drum like this, b'lieve me!"
"Then wait here a minute or two until I come back," whispered the moist-browed man. "For the sooner you can beat it the better."
Sadie watched him as he tiptoed to the door, as he stood listening there, as he cautiously turned the knob, and as he stepped guardedly out and closed the door behind him.
Then she stood with her lips slightly parted and her blue-stenciled eyes very wide. For the moment that door had closed there came to her ear the sounds of a sudden struggle, a muffled thud of feet, vague concussions of the flooring, faint gasps and grunts, telling of some brief and wordless struggle taking place in the hallway immediately outside that door which had so recently opened and closed.
Sadie did not like those sounds. They reminded her of earlier and less equable days. They sent a thousand mouse-feet of alarm scampering up her spinal column. But they also brought back to her a sort of second wind of audacity. Her hand was quite steady as she opened her hand-bag and took Wilsnach's revolver from its hiding-place there. Quite steady, too, was her tread as she advanced to the closed door, listened there and then pressed a straining ear against the dark panel, as Dorgan himself had done.
She could hear nothing more. All movement, apparently, had ceased. But she waited, listening intently. The silence remained unbroken.
The quietness of that house of mystery no longer puzzled her. It became a source of apprehension, of actual alarm. Yet she compelled herself to wait, changing her position a little from time to time, to rest her straining body. Then all further waiting became unendurable.
She closed her hand about the door-knob, turning it softly. To her relief she found the door still unlocked. She swung it back an inch or two, peered out and opened it still wider. Then she stepped into the hall itself. She stood close against the door-frame, staring from one end of this hall to the other.
It was empty.
Her next movement, in accordance with a natural impulse to escape, was toward the street-door. She sidled forward cautiously and silently, until she could go no farther. Then, with a deep breath, she dropped her revolver back in the hand-bag, reached out a hand and turned the knob.
But the door refused to open. It was securely locked, and in it she could find no trace of a key. Close as she was to the open, she found herself shut off from the street by an iron grilling as heavy as cell-bars. Yet it was not alarm that swept through her. It was more a wave of exasperation.
She stood with her back to the door, studying the gloomy house confronting her. Nothing, she decided, was to be gained by inaction. If she could not get out one way, she would proceed to find another. Yet she hesitated to advance deeper into that field of possible ambush, into territory which might be bristling with danger.
She stood there, with her pert young face wrinkled up, carefully weighing what doors to try first and what line of retreat to take up in case of surprise.
Instead of advancing, however, she suddenly shrank deeper into her corner, for close beside her she heard the sound of a key being thrust into the heavy iron door-lock. She waited, breathless, as this key was turned back and the old-fashioned lock-bar released.
The next moment the door itself swung open and a man stepped quickly inside.
She stood crouched back behind the half-opened door, hoping against hope that the newcomer would pass on without locking the doors and without catching sight of her in the uncertain light.
But in this hope she was disappointed. The stranger quickly closed the door, stooped forward a little as he thrust the key into its hole, and then swung about on her with a startled little noise in his throat, strangely like the grunt of a feeding pig confronted by a farm-collie.
Yet he stared at her quietly enough, without any further movement of the body. Sadie Wimpel, equally motionless, stared back at the man confronting her. He was big and blond, with yellow eyelashes and a number of small intersecting scars on either cheek.
She knew, even before she completed her study of the grim and mocking mouth and the pale blue eyes with their serpent-like fortitude, that the man was Keudell himself.
"What are you doing in this house?" he quietly demanded. Yet there was menace in his very calmness, the menace of an alert mind alive to any contingency.
"I'm waiting to get out," was Sadie's prompt and quite truthful reply.
He calmly locked the door and pocketed the key. But never once did the studious pale eyes leave her face. "How did you get in?"
"I came for work," was the prompt reply.
"What kind of work?"
"House-work."
"Who let you in?"
"A big man in a butler's suit; a gink who looks like a gorilla. Then another man came hurryin' in b'hind me and asked for the boss."
"Go on!" commanded the newcomer.
"I was shoved into that room there, and when I was waitin' those two men had a fight at the back o' the house. And I ain't goin' to work in no drum with doin's like that goin' on in it! And I wantta get out!"
The man did not move. "Who sent you here?"
"The Oberholdt Employment Bureau."
"And did my man tell you we had work for you?"
"He told me to wait."
The big blond face did not lose its studiousness. "He did perfectly right," was the altogether unexpected reply. "Will you step this way?"
Sadie held back. "I don't want no work in this kind of a dump," she stubbornly proclaimed.
"Will you step this way?" repeated the big blond man. There was more than command in those five words. There was a threat, a cold and deliberate challenge that could not be disregarded. And the girl knew it was not her moment for finalities.
"Watch your step!" Sadie whispered to herself.
She walked slowly and sullenly ahead of him until he came to a door at the back of a hallway. This door he opened, and waited for her to pass inside. She was disturbed by his calmness. She was further disturbed by the fact that his glance never once left her. And there were certain eventualities for which she wished to be prepared.
"Sit down," he suavely commanded.
Keudell himself, she noticed, took a chair behind a walnut library-table on which stood a desk-telephone and a green-shaded electric reading-lamp. Diffident as was his pose, she chafed under the consciousness of his unparaded power. Behind all his apparent urbanity, she very well knew, was a malice which might at any moment break out.
She started visibly when the call-bell of the desk-phone suddenly rang. She wondered how long it would be before the claws showed through the velvet.
Yet Keudell, as he answered that call, did so with affected unconcern, languidly placing the receiver against a pink and partly inclined ear. He even listened with the faint shadow of a smile on his lips.
Sadie Wimpel sat watching him, wondering why he made her think of a razor-blade wrapped in flannel. And she kept warning herself to be careful, for she knew, from the faint tinkle of that phone-bell, that it was merely a private circuit operated from a dry-cell or two. This meant that from some other quarter in that place of mystery Keudell was being told things which could not be to her advantage.
So she sat watching him, without movement, for he was now talking quickly and not quite so calmly as before. She had no means of even guessing at what his words meant, since they were in a language quite unknown to her. So she watched him with veiled and non-committal eyes as he hung up the receiver, sat leaning forward over the table for a moment or two in deep thought and then looked up at her again. He was even able to indulge in a half-ironic smile as he spoke.
"So you were sent here for work?" he purred, stroking his yellow mustache.
"Yes, sir," was her studiously patient answer.
"Have you any references?" he demanded.
That question sent a sudden tingle through her. It was not one of fear; it was more the faint thrill of hope that comes to the shipwrecked at the sight of a sail on the horizon.
"Yes, sir!"
She spoke demurely and looked down at her handbag with an expectant smile. Then she deferentially stood up as she opened this bag, groping down into it with fingers which did not at once find the papers she seemed to be looking for.
"How'd this do?" she casually inquired.
She stepped demurely forward, until her coat-edge brushed against the top of the walnut table itself.
Keudell looked at her half-raised hand both a little scornfully and a little heavily. He did not move as his vision focused on that outstretched hand, but the pupils of his pale eyes, converging in a stare that retained none of their former indifference, grew suddenly darker in tone. The rabbit-like pinkness of his many-scarred cheeks also deepened, here and there, until the skin was fantastically blotched with brick-red splashes of color.
He found himself staring into the barrel-end of a most formidable-looking revolver. And the hand that held it, he was not slow to notice, was remarkably steady. Yet he faced it without any apparent flinching of his huge body. He even seemed too preoccupied with his predicament to lift his eyes from that unwavering barrel-end to the woman's angry face.
"Don't be a fool!" he cried out, in his quick and impatient guttural.
But the fires of Sadie's anger had stood too long banked to be thus brushed aside. Her blue-lidded eyes flashed with a resentment that was not to be mistaken; the nostrils of her pert young nose were distended with an anger that was ominous.
"I'll be just fool enough to put half-a-dozen holes clean through that fat carcass o' yours, if yuh so much as shift one finger off'n that table, yuh pink-eyed ol' white-slaver yuh!" she hissed out at him. "So don't yuh monkey wit' me, or it'll all be over but the shoutin'!"
"Don't be a fool!" he quietly repeated. Yet it was taking an effort for him to hold himself in. "I admire your spirit, mademoiselle. It is excellent."
"Ha!" snorted Sadie. But her gun stayed where it was.
"And most assuredly I shall find work for you," continued the man at the table.
Sadie's second snort was even more wrathful. "Yuh gimme a pain in the neck! Whadda yuh take me for, anyway? Yuh save that bull-con for the gorilla-guy who's butlerin' for this hang-out! Hand it to the corn-rustlers who ain't hep to a crook from the gyp-game days! For it don't go wit' me! I know who yuh are, and what yuh are, and I could git a Carnegie medal for ev'ry gun-hole I put in that fat head o' yours!"
"One moment, mademoiselle!"
"Not on your life! Yuh and your gorilla-gink 've done consider'ble monkeyin' wit' me this last half-hour, and there's been doin's in this dump that'll call for consider'ble ventilatin'. But if any guy tries to stop me from walkin' out o' this house, I'll ventilate 'em first, and ventilate 'em good! Now, take that door-key out o' your pocket and hand it to me, and hand it to me slow!"
They confronted each other for a silent moment. The man's hand moved across the table-top. Sadie promptly comprehended and intercepted that movement.
"No, yuh don't! Not on your life! Yuh touch that bell-button and it'll be your last move on this green earth!" The revolver-barrel was advanced several inches closer to Keudell's head. "Yuh hand out that door-key!"
Keudell slowly and deliberately reached into his pocket and handed out the key, dropping it on the table-top in front of her. She reached for it with her left hand, feeling about the smooth wood until her fingers came in contact with it. Then she drew back a step or two. She still watched Keudell and still kept him covered. Yet as she did so a barely perceptible change crept over the figure confronting her from the chair on the other side of the table.
"I see, mademoiselle, you do not trust me," he said with a smile as she backed away.
"'Bout as much as a rattler!" was her prompt reply. Yet his smile widened, apparently at this pleasantry. And that smile disturbed Sadie. It wavered before her as the signal of some secret and reassuring knowledge to which she was not as yet a party. But she intended not to lose her chance.
"Yuh don't make a mark outta me!" she proclaimed as she continued to back away, step by step, with her revolver in one hand and the house-key in the other. "And it's worth rememberin' the first move outta that chair means flirtin' wit' a tombstone!"
He turned his head a little as she continued to back away, shifting about so as to be still facing her. And still again he smiled.
"Then I warn you, mademoiselle, to watch me most carefully," he half mockingly called out to her. Yet it was his expression more than his actual words that disturbed the retreating Sadie.
"Oh, I'll watch yuh," she said, as she felt behind her and opened the door into the hallway. Three more steps, she knew, would take her out of his sight, and twenty more would take her out of the house. So she withdrew with infinite precaution, never letting her eye waver from her enemy.
It was at the third step that she wondered why he suddenly ducked beneath the table-top. Her answer to that question came unexpectedly, in a sudden clutch about the body that swung her feet clear of the floor at the same time that it clamped her right arm closely against her side.
It was not until she saw the pair of great hairy wrists clutching her arms that she realized the meaning of that sudden imprisonment. It was then only that she understood the significance of Keudell's smile. Some time during her retreat across the room the door that led to the hall had been silently opened and closed. And without dreaming of what awaited her, she had backed into the arms of Keudell's gorilla-like accomplice.
She knew this, but she did not waste energy in any prolonged resistance, for she also knew that it was foolish to struggle against the pressure of Canby's vise-like arms. Yet she watched for her chance, watched with a wariness born of desperation.
She watched as the hairy hand reached out and wrenched the house-key from her fingers. She saw it flung across the room, and Keudell's sudden movement as he hurriedly slipped from his chair to recover it.
It was, indeed, not until her captor reached out for her revolver that she started to struggle. Into that struggle she put all the vehemence of her outraged innocence, her ill-treated body, her revolt against indignities not to be endured.
But for all her fury she found herself helpless. She was imprisoned by thongs and sinews incomparably stronger than her own. Her right hand was still free and the revolver was still clutched in her fingers. But the hairy hand clenched over her forearm prevented any use of the weapon. The most she could do, during that one-sided struggle, was to keep it out of Canby's grasp. Her enemy realized the necessity of possessing that firearm and seemed determined to have it, at the cost of any effort. He twisted her writhing body cruelly about, so that her back was held close against his own panting body. Then he worked his left arm up so that it was held crook-like close in under her chin and in a position for promptly garroting her, once the pressure of that constricting arm was brought to bear on her neck. And this would undoubtedly have been effected, had not Sadie Wimpel suddenly twisted her head about and at the same time bent her knees, so that she dropped and hung suspended from the arm that imprisoned her. This brought her mouth close to the bare flesh of the hairy wrist. Without a moment's hesitation she caught that wrist in her singularly strong young teeth. She snapped at it like an animal, sinking her teeth in the yielding flesh with all the strength of her jaw-muscles. She bit deeper, until the taste of blood all but sickened her and the man himself, with an angry gasp, released his right hand and struck blindly at her face. It was an instinctive and unreasoning reaction against pain too acute to be endured. And while it was not what the struggling girl had looked for, she was still alert-minded enough, for all her lack of breath, to realize her chance when it was presented to her. Clamped as she still was close against that gross body behind her, she found her right arm suddenly released.
She had neither the time nor the strength to deliberate on her aim. But the lurching struggles of the man holding her had brought his right leg forward so that it fell within her line of vision at the same moment that her exhausted right hand went down. Instinctively she pulled the trigger, even while the garroting arm about her throat constricted until her very breath of life was shut off.
She had neither the time nor the strength for a second shot, for that strangle-hold was too much for her, stopping as it did her very power of breathing, clamping close about under her chin until she could feel the very cartilage of her neck crackle.
It was at the moment that this vise-like clutch seemed unendurable that she realized her shot had not gone wide. For the next moment the pressure relaxed, the arm about her throat fell slowly away and the hairy figure so close behind her fell as slowly to the ground.
She staggered back against the wall, gaping at the fallen man and gasping for breath. She stared down at his ludicrously exposed white sock and the leather shoe-top already reddened with blood. She saw that she had shot him somewhere below the knee. Yet that fact did not altogether disturb her. She was not thinking of others, but of herself. What apprehension she knew arose from the question as to how long the first nervous shock of such a wound would eliminate this hairy monster as a factor in her fight for freedom, for she still remembered that she had Keudell to reckon with, and that before all other things she wanted freedom, and nothing but freedom.
The thought of that second enemy steeled her into sudden activity. She crouched back, sweeping the room with one quick and combative stare. Had she found Keudell there, facing her, she could have felt more at her ease. But the discovery that the room was already empty filled her with a sudden unreasoning terror, since it confronted her with a peril that was both unknown and unseen. Keudell, she felt convinced, would never permit her to escape. Things had gone too far. And a Keudell out of sight implied a Keudell maneuvering in some secret manner against her, making ready to confound her with some blow that would be as unexpected as it would be decisive.
Sadie's next move was to swing about and face the open door. But even in that corroding storm of anger at the affronts which had been heaped upon her, much of her native wariness remained with her. So as she crept toward the hall-door she did so with a series of movements that were feline in their noiselessness. Then she stood there, with one hand against the door-frame, listening. A moment later, as she advanced her head about the corner of that door-frame, the movement was as cautious as the blink of a gopher from its sand-knoll.
"For the love o' Mike!" she softly murmured.
For she at last realized, as she stared toward the front of the house, why Keudell was not for the moment interested in her.
That blond giant, she could see, was otherwise engaged. He was engaged in holding down on the carpeted floor the still struggling figure of the man who called himself Dorgan. Where the latter had reappeared from, Sadie could not even guess. But she could see, as she ventured a second view, that he was plainly much the worse for wear. He was, however, still struggling fiercely if hopelessly against his stronger opponent, who apparently had witnessed his flight toward the house-door and had taken prompt measures to intercept it.
Yet in neither of these combatants did the watching woman evince any prolonged interest. She felt no regret at the discovery that Keudell's nose was bleeding profusely, giving an air of sodden dejection to his haughtily up-turned Teutonic mustache. She felt no sympathy for the bruised and battered Dorgan, with his discolored eyes and his sadly torn clothing. His ultimate fate did not even concern her. She was sick of the whole house. Her soul was by this time preoccupied with its one passion, its one undeviating and all-consuming passion to escape, to get away from that abode of uncouth encounters and mysterious enemies. Something within her whimpered like a kenneled hound for release from those gloomy quarters. Her lungs ached for the breath of the open again. And she intended to go, she solemnly told herself, while the going was good.
To go by the natural avenue of the street-door, she knew, was now out of the question. That would take her too close to Keudell, who at any moment could leave Dorgan to his own devices. So she stood back in the doorway, studying the stairs that led upward. She was familiar enough with the structure of city houses to feel assured that somewhere from those upper regions would be an opening to the roof. And on more than one occasion, in the past, Sadie had had occasion to soar upward and skim along the sky-line route.
So she stooped down and made sure the manila envelope was still in her stocking. Then, with a deep breath, she took the hall at a run.
She was across the hall and had reached the stairway before Keudell even caught sight of her. Before he had scrambled to his feet and started in pursuit she was half-way up the stairway itself. She was harried by the fear that he might fire at her, yet she did not let this thought deter her flying steps. She decided not to lose ground by trying to shoot back until she was compelled to. Then, she grimly concluded, she would go the limit. For she felt reasonably certain there were no enemies above her, or she should have long since heard from that quarter. Her one fear was that the heavy-bodied Keudell might overtake her—and that would mean the undoing of Kestner's planning, and the defeat of Wilsnach's hopes.
She decided, as she reached the landing and swung about the banister, to take a pot-shot or two for luck. So she fired, as she ran, and saw her first bullet scatter the wall-plaster not two feet from Keudell's bobbing head. The second shot splintered one of the hardwood banister spindles. And she did not stop for another, for by this time she realized her pursuer was at least not gaining on her.
She was almost at the top of the second flight before that pursuer reached its bottom step. Facing her on the landing above, she caught sight of a white enamel high-boy on which stood a pewter tray whereon were arrayed a row of drinking glasses, a soda-siphon and a collection of empty beer bottles. With one quick jerk, as she reached the landing, she swung this laden high-boy out from the wall. A second push sent it crashing and careening down the stairway, gathering speed as it went.
But she did not stop to determine the result of that catapulting descent. She rounded the banister and made for the next floor, swung about to the last stairway and found herself at the top of the house, confronted by a door which proved to be locked. This door, she felt, would surely lead toward the roof. So after a second ineffectual tug at its knob she stood back, fired one quick shot into its lock and swung it open to the sound of falling metal.
In front of her stood a small iron ladder. Up this she swarmed, until she came to a transom, held shut by a chain over a heavy iron staple. It took her but a moment or two to untie this chain, push up the transom and climb into the open air.
With that advent to the open her spirits suddenly came back to her, and she giggled audibly, with a half-hysterical and sobbing choke at the end of her laughter. But she did not even stop to replace the transom. She scurried across the flat tin roof until she came to a tile-covered wall-top. Over this she scrambled, dropping to a roof of tar-and-gravel a couple of feet lower than the first one. Then came the climb to another tinned roof with a locked transom, another tile-covered party-wall which taxed her strength to surmount, another series of roofs in ever ascending planes, and then a flat house-top studded with clothes-line stanchions, between which stood a square frame shed like the deck-house of a schooner.
At the back of this roof-shed Sadie found a door that opened on a steep and narrow flight of steps. She paused for just one moment, first to look back, then to stow away her revolver, and then to straighten her hat.
Then she entered the hatchway between the line-stanchions and stepped quietly but quickly down the narrow stairs. She listened, when she came to the first floor below, but could hear nothing beyond the distant sound of a piano. So she crept on, peering over the banister from time to time, and breathing easier at every foot of territory safely covered.
She had reached the second floor and was almost at the last stair-head when an interruption came. It came suddenly, with the unexpected opening of a door close beside her. Through this door stepped a tall and angular man in a voluminous bathrobe. In his hand he carried a towel and sponge, and the high-arched dome of his freshly scrubbed bald head shone like polished metal in the strong side-light.
Sadie, quick as thought, stopped and veered about so that she faced the door nearest her on the opposite side of the hall. She seemed to be staring at this door with troubled anxiety.
"Pawdon me," she drawled over her shoulder to the advancing figure, "but is this Miss Derfflinger's room?"
"Derfflinger?" repeated the man in the bathrobe, eying her suspiciously. "There's no Miss Derfflinger in this house."
"There must be," suavely argued Sadie Wimpel, with one ear cocked for any telltale sound from the upper regions through which she had so recently descended.
"Who told you there was?" demanded the man.
Sadie, instead of answering that question, asked another.
"What number is this?" she promptly inquired.
"Two hundred and thirty-one!"
Sadie had backed away until her hand was on the banister-rail leading to the floor below. Nothing, she decided, was now going to come between her and the street.
"Then wasn't it funny of the maid not to tell me?" she murmured in mild perplexity. But she turned about and began her descent.
"What maid?" barked out the man in the bath-robe, following her to the head of the stairs.
"Why, your maid, of course," answered the tranquil-eyed young woman who was now half-way down the stairs.
"We have no maid!" decisively and belligerently called out the man at the stair-head.
Sadie had reached the ground floor and was advancing toward the street entrance by this time. She knew she was safe.
"No, I don't s'pose a cheap skate like yuh ever would have one!" called back the defiant and quite reckless trespasser, conscious of the fact that she was only ten short steps from the open street and that nothing could now stand between her and her freedom.
As she swept through the door she slammed it shut with a force vindictive enough to loosen the paint-checks on its faded panels. Then she hurried down the steps, turned to the right, and once she had rounded the corner was glad to hear the companionable pulse of the city's traffic all about her and the press of the prosaic and every-day Avenue crowd close at her elbows. She pushed her way on through that crowd until she spotted an empty taxicab and promptly signaled its driver.
A minute later she was sitting back in an upholstered seat, humming homeward, sighing with relief as she poised her tired feet well up on the leather-covered railing in front of her. And during that journey she divided her time between powdering her nose and massaging with a gently investiatory forefinger certain more or less bruised and tender portions of her body.
"I guess I'm some little singed-cat," she meditated, "shootin' that boob through the shin-bone! But when yuh mosey round wit' the big-mitters yuh gotta watch the deck or drop your pile! And he sure did squeeze in me rib-cage for me!"