Feeling out with his left hand, his automatic thrown a little forward in his right, he began to retrace his way along the blank wall of the corridor, pausing between each step to listen, moving silently, his tread on the heavy carpet as noiseless as though it were some shadow creeping there.

Stillness—­utter, absolute!  Always that stillness.  Always that sense of danger around him—­the tense, bated expectancy of momentary attack—­a revolver flash through the darkness—­a sudden rush upon him.  But still there was nothing—­only the darkness, only the silence.

He gained the head of the stairs and began to descend—­and now the strain began to tell upon his nerves again.  Again he was possessed of the mad impulse to cry out, to do anything that would force the issue, that would end the horrible, unbearable suspense.  Why did that revolver shot not come?  Why had they not yet rushed upon him?  Why were they playing with him as a cat with a mouse?  Or was it all wild, fanciful imagination?  No!  What was that again!  He could have sworn this time that he had heard a sound, but he could neither define its character, nor locate the direction from which it had come.

He was at the foot of the stairs now; and, guiding himself by the wall, moving now barely an inch at a time, he reached the library door that he had left open, and stole in over the threshold.  Halfway down the room and diagonally across from where he stood was the window.  In a moment now he could gain that, but they would never let him go so easily—­and so it must come now, in that next moment, their attack!  Where were they?  Where were they now?  The table—­he must remember not to bump into the table!  A pause between each step, he was crossing the room.  He was halfway to the window.  Had it been all fancy, was he to—­And then Jimmie Dale stood motionless.  Some one had closed the library door softly!

Stillness again!  A sort of deadly calm upon him, Jimmie Dale felt out behind his back for the big library table that he had been circuiting—­if the window were wide open it might be done, but to jump for it and stand silhouetted there during the pause necessary to fling the window up was little less than suicidal.  He edged back noiselessly until his fingers touched the table; then, lowering himself to his knees, he backed in underneath it, and lay flat upon the floor.  It was not much protection, but it had one advantage:  if they switched on the lights it would show an empty room for the first instant, and that instant meant—­the first shot!

Where were they now?  By the library door?  How many of them were there?  Well, it was their move!  Two could play at cat and mouse until—­until daylight!  That wasn’t very far off, now, and when that came he might still have the first shot, but after that—­he turned his head quickly toward the window.  There was a faint scratching noise as of finger nails gripping the sill; then the window, very slowly, almost silently, was pushed steadily upward, and a dark form loomed up outside; and then, crawling through, a man dropped, as though his feet were padded like a cat’s on the floor inside the room.  The Magpie!