Читать книгу Blacksheep! Blacksheep! - Meredith Nicholson - Страница 9

Table of Contents

It was close upon midnight and the presence of a prowler on the premises caused his heart to gallop wildly. He seized the pistol, crept to the window and peered cautiously out. Between the crash of the breakers he listened intently and had decided that the steps had been the illusion of a dream when a sound in the room below renewed his alarm. He gained the door in two jumps. He could hear the opening and closing of drawers and see the flash of an electric lamp as the thief moved swiftly about, apparently taking it for granted that he had the house to himself. The swish of the swing-door between dining-room and pantry marked his investigations in the rear of the house. He evidently found nothing there, for he was back in the hall again in a moment. Then through the vast silence of the big house the unknown gave voice to his anger and disappointment:

"Well, I'll be damned!"

This, reaching Archie very clearly, added nothing to his comfort. He debated making a dash for the switch and flooding the lower rooms with light, but a burglar angrily damning himself for his stupidity in entering a house where plated silver was the only booty in sight was not a person to provoke unnecessarily. Then a series of quick flashes on the wall of the stair gave warning of the intruder's invasion of the upper rooms.

Archie drew back and waited. His thoughts and emotions in this hour of danger interested him. He had always imagined that he would collapse in any moment of peril. The fingers of his left hand sought the wrist of his right that grasped the automatic and while his heart was still beating quickly the pulse was regular. This was immensely gratifying and he resolved to report the fact to his medical counselor at the first opportunity.

The thief had become more cautious and was tiptoeing up the uncarpeted treads of the stair, still sending occasionally a bar of light ahead. All the doors of the bedrooms stood open, Archie remembered, and the thief would not be long in discovering that the recent occupants had left behind them nothing of the slightest value. His courage was mounting; he was enormously surprised to find that his hands were quite steady, and his mind had never functioned more perfectly. The burglar was now in Mrs. Congdon's room, where he stumbled over a chair that rocked furiously until stilled by the invader. He was now coming boldly down the hall as though satisfied that the house was empty. A flash of his lamp fell upon the door frame just above Archie's left hand.

He crawled hastily across the bed and swung round and waited with his back against a chiffonier in the corner, sternly resolved that not without a struggle would he be shot and his body left lying crumpled in a corner with no one to tell the tale. He had the advantage of the knowledge of the enemy's approach, and he raised the gun and covered the door in readiness. A flash clipped the dark for an instant. Then a hand groped along the wall seeking the switch. Archie could hear its soft rasping over the wall. As the switch snapped the room flooded with light. The bewildering glare leaping out of the darkness held the man in the doorway and he raised his arm and passed his hand over his eyes to shield them from the light.

Between the front windows stood a long mirror swung in a movable frame, and as he measured distances and calculated chances Archie found himself staring at the reflection of a tall man with a cap pulled low over his head and with the collar of a yellowish raincoat turned up about his face. The eyes of the two met, the gaze of each gripping and holding that of the other.

The burglar's shoulders drooped as he gaped at the mirrored apparition. Then swiftly he jerked a pistol from his pocket and fired point blank into the mirror. The report crashed horribly in the room, followed by the tinkle of fragments of glass. Archie aimed at the doorway, but his shot seemed only to hasten the man's flight. A rug slipped and the fugitive fell with a frightened yell that rang eerily through the house.

In the hall Archie turned on all the lights and gaining the landing fired at the retreating figure as it plunged toward the front door. At the crack of the gun the fugitive stopped short, clapped his hand to his shoulder and groaned, then sprang through the front door and Bennett heard immediately the quick patter of his feet on the walk.

The lock bore no evidence of having been forced. It was a curious business and Archie closed the door, placed a heavy chair against it, and feeling a little giddy he threw himself down on a davenport in the living-room. He began thinking very hard. He had shot a man and for all he knew the victim might be lying dead somewhere on the premises. To be sure the shooting of an armed housebreaker was justifiable, but the thought of coroner's inquests and dallyings with the police filled him with horror. The newspapers would seize upon the case with avidity, and his friends would never cease twitting him about his valor in firing a bullet into the back of a fleeing burglar.

The frame of the photograph of the young girl that had so charmed him lay on the floor face down. Bennett picked it up and found that the picture had been removed. He wondered a little at this but dismissed the subject from his mind to consider the graver business of how to avoid the disagreeable consequences of his encounter. He must leave the house and escape from Bailey Harbor before daybreak, and he went upstairs and hurriedly began dressing.