There was the piano again, the
breathing, the weird pound and thump of the silence--nothing else. He
shook his head in half angry, half tolerant self-remonstrance. He was
under strain, that was all--he had thought he had heard a footstep out
there in the alleyway. He laid his automatic on the floor within instant
reach, and turned again to the safe--acute and sensitive as his hearing
was, it would haw taken good ears indeed to have distinguished a step at
that distance on the other side of the house!
But now he worked, seemingly at least, with even greater rapidity than
before. Imagination had had one effect, if it had had no other--it was a
spur, a reminder that at any moment there might well be a footstep, and
one that was born only of the imagination! His jaws clamped. He had not
counted on this--an old-fashioned iron monstrosity that was dismaying
only in its appearance, perhaps--but not this! He had been here far
longer now than he--
'Ah'--tense, low, that deep intake of the breath again.
The inner door swung wide; the flashlight's ray leaped, dazzling white,
into the interior, and, on the lower shelf, upon a flat, narrow, black
tin box--the cash-box.
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