Barbara and Ruth both awoke with a feeling that a light had flashed over their faces, but neither of them spoke nor moved. How long they had slept they could not know. It seemed almost morning, but not a ray of daylight came through the closed blinds.
Across the room the flash shone for an instant, then darted on like a will-o’-the-wisp. Both girls dimly saw the outline of a man crouching in the shadow along the wall. His hand slid cautiously up the sides of the bureau, fingering, for a moment, the toilet articles on the dresser. Then the search-light for an instant darted along the mantel and turned to the bed again. The girls were nearly fainting with terror. Ruth remembered that, for once, she had locked her money and her jewels in her trunk.
The man stood absolutely still and listened. Not a sound!
So quiet lay both girls that neither one knew the other had wakened.
The man continued his search, but plainly this was not the room he sought. Still moving, his feet making absolutely no sound, the dark figure with the lantern crept out of the girls’ room, to the front of the corridor, and turned down the narrow, private hallway.
“Aunt Sallie!” Ruth thought with a gasp. She had said she would leave her door open, so she might hear if the girls called her in the night. And Aunt Sallie carried a large sum of money for the expenses of the trip, and her own jewelry as well.
It may be that Ruth made a sound, anyway Barbara knew that her roommate was awake. Both had the same thought at just the same instant.
Noiselessly, without a word, on bare feet, both girls sped down the hall to Miss Sallie’s open door. What they would do when they got there neither of them knew. It was time for action, not for thought! At the open door they paused and knelt in the shadow. Black darkness was about them, save in Aunt Sallie’s room, where a dark lantern flashed its uncanny light. The girls were alert in every faculty. Now they could see more distinctly the form of the man who carried the lantern. He was of medium height and slender. Over his face he wore a black mask through which gleamed his eyes, narrowed to two fine points of steel.
Should the girls cry out? The man was armed and it might mean death to Aunt Sallie or themselves.
Evidently the burglar meant to make a thorough search of the room before he went to the bed, where, he guessed, the valuables were probably kept; but he must know first. The room was bare of treasure. He walked cautiously to where Miss Sallie still slept in complete unconsciousness, this time holding his lantern down, that its light should not waken the sleeping woman.