Part 38 (2/2)

It was slowly veering round, to bring her again within range.

Her eyes measured the room wildly. The windows commanded every part of it except the two upper corners. She must fly across the room or be shot like a dog.

She sprang up and flitted swiftly along the wall, and out of range.

Now she was safe for a few seconds. She might crouch upon the carpet and pray a few wild words for safety.

The pistol returned to the door and covered it, in case of attempted escape.

As long as her enemy could get nothing larger than the tube of a pistol in, she was safe in her corner; but if he enlarged the hole enough to introduce his hand with the pistol, she was lost; for there was no large piece of furniture near which she could hide behind.

”If I could but circ.u.mvent him until daylight,” she thought, ”this night's danger would be past.”

She looked at her watch. It was two of the night.

”Three hours to wait,” she pondered, with a despairing heart. ”Can I possibly defy him for three hours? He is crafty and desperate; he is here to put an end to my life, and will not go away unsuccessful. I am terrified, helpless, and without resource. Which of us is likely to triumph?”

Her eyes went longingly to the old-fas.h.i.+oned bell-pulls hanging at each side of the fire-place.

”If I dare to rush across the room and ring a peal to awake the household, I would be shot before my hand left the bell-rope,” she told herself.

Why had she lit the tell-tale candle? There it burned, white and faintly tremulous in the current of air caused by the hole in the shutter, slowly wasting away, but distinctly revealing her every movement to the watchful a.s.sa.s.sin without.

Was there no way by which she could extinguish it and leave herself in the friendly darkness?

If the thought occurred to him of enlarging the aperture and shooting her in her place of refuge, the candle would too surely guide his murderous hand.

Even while thus she reasoned, the pistol was removed, and the grating of a tiny saw against the shutter recommenced.

Horror paralyzed the terrified girl for an instant; the next, with rare presence of mind, she s.n.a.t.c.hed the cloak off her shoulders in which she had been wrapped, and hurled it with all her strength across the room.

Like a huge, ugly bat, it made for the candle, swept it off the table, and she was surrounded in a moment by darkness.

The grating sound came to an abrupt stop, and a smothered oath came through the auger-hole.

”Give up that book, Margaret Walsingham,” said the hoa.r.s.e voice of her foe, ”for as sure as you live and breathe your life will go for it if you don't.”

Margaret remained still as a statue, not daring to breathe.

”I'll make terms with you even now, if you hand me the book,” said the wily voice again.

She bowed her face in her hands, and smiled even in the midst of her terror at such a proposition.

A long silence followed, then the steady sawing of the wooden panel went on.

It was done. A wintry star glimmered in through a gap large enough to admit a man's arm; then the star was blotted out, and a metallic click was heard.

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