The City of Peril by Arthur Stringer

Author:Arthur Stringer
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter XXVIII—THE BRINK OF DESPAIR

Not a word was said as my two captors let my inert body sag down upon the floor of the vestibule. MacGirr merely pushed me with his foot closer in along the right-hand wall, so that I faced the two outer doors as I lay there. To one of these outer doors, I saw, a screw-eye had been fastened, at a distance of some two or three inches from the floor. To this screw-eye had been attached a piece of stout cord, about three feet in length. The other end of the cord was made fast to a roughly bent bit of wire which protruded from a slit in an oblong wooden box about fourteen inches long and six or seven inches high.

That box, I knew, was Schmidlapp's infernal machine, composed of giant-caps. All that was necessary to detonate it was a tug on the string tied to the wire hook, which was made fast to the cork of a bottle of sulphuric acid. The moment that cork was pulled and the sulphuric acid released, the explosion would take place. And nobody could open that street door--nobody could attempt to enter the house--without detonating this devilishly planned mine. I was to be left there, unable to make a movement or sound, until Marvin Stillwell returned to his home and opened the door which was to send us simultaneously to death.

All this I saw and knew in the brief moments during which the malignant MacGirr stooped over me, as though to carry away with him some consoling memory of the anguish that was written on my face. Then he emitted his animal-like grunt of satisfaction, and quietly closed and fastened the two inner doors. I knew, by the sounds, that he had once more climbed the stairs and taken up his work on the overturned safe.

The one thought that now terrorized me was that at any moment Stillwell might come in. I felt sure that I should be able to hear his approach on the sandstone steps without. The knowledge that I should hear him--that I should know when the pass-key was inserted in the lock, the door-knob turned, and the door itself swung back--and yet be utterly powerless to warn him, seemed more than my overtaxed nerves could bear.

It took a great effort to steady them. There was a struggle, such as one seldom goes through, before I could master my feelings and forget the ache in my body and the infinitely keener anguish of my mind. Death itself could be little darker than that battle between hopelessness and hope, before I learned to fix my attention on the situation before me. For the second time I warned myself to be calm, to think clearly and quickly.

First I tried each hand and leg, methodically, limb by limb. But any hope of liberating myself had to be abandoned. Then I compelled my attention to the vestibule that surrounded me.

It was as bald as a vault, with the

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