Bob reached the door that led into the office where he worked and stopped suddenly. He felt cold all over as he stared at the doorknob. He remembered distinctly having wrapped his own handkerchief around the knob to preserve possible fingerprints. But there was no handkerchief there now and the door was slightly ajar. The light had been on when he stepped into the hall, but now the room was in inky darkness.
Chapter VI
IN THE DARKENED ROOM
★
Bob paused on the threshold of the long office, staring into the blackness of the room. After his recent experiences he couldn’t be blamed for hesitating a moment.
Should he close the door, back into the hall and await his uncle’s arrival or should he snap on the lights and see what had taken place in the room? It seemed to Bob that he pondered those questions for several minutes; actually it was less than five seconds.
He reached for the light switch at the left of the doorway and pushed the button. But there was no answering blaze of light; only the dead click of the switch.
Bob knew then that the lights had been tampered with, that more than likely someone was lurking in the shadowy darkness of the office. His better judgment told him to wait until he could summon assistance, but some other urge drove him on. He couldn’t explain it later; he simply went ahead.
The young filing clerk stepped across the threshold, the flashlight in his hand aimed down the center of the room. Then he turned on the flash and a beam of light cut through the darkness.
Bob gasped. The light showed papers strewn over the floor and the drawers from desks and filing cases pulled indiscriminately out and dumped on the floor.
The shock of the confusion in the office brought him up short. Then he started to swing the light about the room to determine the full extent of the damage by the marauder.
A slight noise to the right caught Bob’s attention and he turned in that direction. Instinctively he knew that danger lurked there, and he tensed his body. It came before he was ready; something hurtling out of the dark; something that struck his right hand a numbing blow; something that sent the flashlight crashing to the floor where the lens and the bulb shattered and the light went out.