.
And there was very little sound. Once she detected a footstep from the
interior of some room as it moved across a bare floor; once she heard
a door creak somewhere upstairs; and once, from some indeterminate
direction, she thought she heard voices whispering together for a
moment.

She moved suddenly then, abruptly, almost impulsively, but careful
not to make the slightest noise. She dared not remain another instant
inactive. It was what she had expected, what she had counted upon as an
ally, this darkness, but she was not one who laughed, even in daylight,
at its psychology. It was beginning to attack her now; her imagination
to magnify even the actual dangers that she knew to be around her. And
she must fight it off before it got a hold upon her, and before panic
voices out of the blackness began to shriek and clamor in her ears, as
she knew they would do with pitifully little provocation, urging her to
turn and flee incontinently.

The staircase, she remembered, was at her right; and feeling out before
her with her hands, she reached the stairs, and began to mount them.
She went slowly, very slowly. They were bare, the stairs, and unless one
were extremely careful they would creak out through the silence with a
noise that could be heard from top to bottom of the tenement. But she
was not making any noise; she dared not make any noise.

Halfway up she halted and pressed her body close against the wall. Was
that somebody coming? She held her breath in expectation. There wasn't
a sound now, but she could have sworn she had heard a footstep on the
hallway above, or on the upper stairs. She bit her lips in vexation.
Panic noises! That's what they were! That, and the thumping of her
heart! Why was it that alarms and exaggerated fancies came and tried to
unnerve her? What, after all, was there really to be afraid of? She
had almost a clear two hours before she need even anticipate any actual
danger here, and, if Nicky Viner were in, she would be away from the
tenement again in another fifteen minutes at the latest.

Rhoda Gray went on again, and gaining the landing, halted once more.
And here she smiled at herself with the tolerant chiding she would have
accorded a child that was frightened without warrant. She could account
for those whisperings and that footstep now. The door to the left, the
one next to Nicky Viner's squalid, two-room apartment, was evidently
partially open, and occasionally some one moved within;