eard me, for the
pistol clicked again. I did not like this, and had some thoughts of
backing out of my job. But I didn't. I merely waited till I heard his
step again; then I followed.

"But very warily this time. It was not an agreeable venture. It was like
descending into a well with possible death at the bottom. I could see
nothing and presently could hear nothing but the almost imperceptible
sliding of my own fingers down the curve of the wall, which was all I
had to guide me. Had he stopped midway, and would my first intimation of
his presence be the touch of cold steel or the flinging around me of
two murderous arms? I had met with no break in the smooth surface of
the wall, so could not have reached the second story. When I should get
there the question would be whether to leave the staircase and seek him
in the mazes of its great rooms, or to keep on down to the parlor floor
and so to the street, whither he was possibly bound. I own that I
was almost tempted to turn on my light and have done with it, but I
remembered of how little use I should be to you lying in this well of a
stairway with a bullet in me, and so I managed to compose myself and go
on as I had begun. Next instant my fingers slipped round the edge of an
opening, and I knew that the moment of decision had come. Realizing that
no one can move so softly that he will not give away his presence in
some way, I paused for the sound which I knew must come, and when a
click rose from the depths of the hall before me I plunged into that
hall and thus into the house proper.

"Here it was not so dark; yet I could make out none of the objects I now
and then ran against. I passed a mirror (I hardly know how I knew it to
be such), and in that mirror I seemed to see the ghost of a ghost flit
by and vanish. It was too much. I muttered a suppressed oath and plunged
forward, when I struck against a closing door. It flew open again and I
rushed in, turning on my light in my extreme desperation, when, instead
of hearing the sharp report of a pistol, as I expected, I saw a second
door fall to before me, this time with a sound like the snap of a spring
lock. Finding that this was so, and that all advance was barred that
way, I wheeled hurriedly back toward the door by which I had entered the
place, to find that that had fallen to simultaneously with the other,
a single spring acting for both. I was trapped--a prisoner in the
strangest sort of passageway or closet; and,