Nine Short Stories | Page 2

versed in
the best burglar tradition. Also, perhaps, he was hungry. He ate as one
who respects food but has no time for formalities.
He had flnished the meat and vegetables and was beginning on the
shortcake, when all of a sudden he sprang noiselessly from his chair to
the electric button on the wall. A tiny click and the room was in
darkness. He crouched low against the wall, while the footsteps that
had startled him from above became louder as they began to descend
the back stairs.
There might still be a chance to make the door into the dining room,
but he decided against it. Scarcely breathing, he pulled himself together
and waited. The footsteps became louder still; they halted, and he heard
a hand fumbling at the knob of the stairway door. The noise of the
opening door followed.
Bill's mind was working like lightning. Probably some one had been
awake and seen the light from a slit through the window shade. Man or

woman? He would soon know.
The footsteps sounded on the floor, advancing, and his eyes,
accustomed to the darkness, caught a dim outline. Noiselessly his hand
sought the side pocket of his coat and fumbled there. The figure
approached; it was now quite close, so close that all Bill had to do was
rise swiftly to his feet and close his fingers in their viselike grip.
A curious penetrating odor filled the air and a sputtering, muffled cry
came from the intruder. A short, sharp struggle, and the form sank
limply to the floor. Kneeling down, Bill pressed the damp sponge a
little longer against the nostrils and mouth until the body had quite
relaxed, then returned the sponge to the pocket that held the chloroform
tube.
He switched on the light and surveyed his prostrate anesthetized victim.
It was a powerful-looking woman in a blue flannel nightgown; feet
large and red, face coarse in feature and of contomr Scandinavian;
probably the cook. Bill wasted little thought on her. The point was that
his blood was up now. He had had the taste of danger and his eyes
gleamed. He shot a glance at the open stairway door.
A moment later his shoes were off, strung from his belt by their laces,
and he was on his way up--silently, warily. The eleventh step creaked a
little and he stopped short.
Two minutes and no sound.
He went on to the top of the stairs and halted there, standing a while to
listen before risking his electric flash. Its rays showed him a long wide
hall with two doors on one side and three on the other, all closed, so he
moved noiselessly on to the farther end, the front of the house, listened
a moment at the crack of a door and then cautiously turned the knob
and entered, leaving the door open behind him.
His ear told him instantly that he was not alone; the room was occupied;
he heard some one breathing. His nerves were drawn tight now, his
whole body alert and quivering with the pleasurable excitement of it?

Like a thoroughbred at the barrier.
A faint reflection of light from the street lamp came in through the
window, just enough to make out the dim forms of furniture and the
vague lumpy outline under the covers on the bed. He heard a watch
ticking; it became less audible when he had moved swiftly to the
dressing table and transferred the timepiece to his own pocket. He
turned as by instinct toward the door of the closet, but halted sharply
halfway across the room.
There was something queer about that breathing. He listened tensely.
Most irregular. Surely not the respiration of a sleeper--and he was an
expert on the subject. Suspicious, to say the least.
Like a flash he was at the bedside, and his sharp gaze detected a
shuddering movement all over the form that lay there under the sheets.
His hand flew to the side pocket of his coat, then he remembered that
the chloroform tube was empty. In a fit of rashness he pressed the
button of his pocket-flash, and there on the pillow, in the center of the
bright electric ray that shot forth, he saw the face of a man with mouth
wide open and eyes staring in abject terror--a man wide awake and
petrified with fear.
Bill had seen such countenances before, and experience had taught him
to waste no time in taking advantage of the wideopen mouth. So,
moving with swift sureness, he filled that gaping aperture with the
corner of a sheet, stuffing it in with conscientious thoroughness. Then,
while the man made feeble attempts to get loose, which Bill impatiently
ignored, he tied his hands and feet and made the gag secure.