Clang of the gate: whine of the descending car: silence....
Softly P. Sybarite tiptoed down the stairs.
Disappointment, however, lay in ambush for him at his nefarious goal: evidently Western Union had been punctilious about his duty; not even so much as the tip of a corner of yellow envelope peeped from under the door.
Reckless in exasperation, P. Sybarite first wasted time educing a series of short, sharp barks from the bell—a peculiarly irritating noise, calculated (one would think) to rouse the dead—then tried the door and, finding it fast, in the end knelt and bent an ear to the keyhole, listening....
Not a sound: silence of the grave; the house deathly still. He could hear his own heart drumming; but, from Shaynon's flat, nothing....
Or—was that the creak of a board beneath a stealthy footstep?
If so, it wasn't repeated....
Again, could it be possible his ears did actually detect a sound of human respiration through the keyhole? Was Bayard Shaynon just the other side of that inch-wide pressed-steel barrier, the fire-proof door, cowering in throes of some paralysing fright, afraid to answer the summons?...
If so, why? What did he fear? The police, perhaps? And if so—why? What crime had become his so to unman him that he dared not open and put his fate to the test?...
Quickly there took shape in the imagination of the little Irishman a hideous vision of mortal Fear, wild-eyed, white-lipped, and all a-tremble, skulking in panic only a little beyond his reach: a fancy that so worked upon his nerves that he himself seemed infected with its shuddering dread, and thought to feel the fine hairs a-crawl on his neck and scalp and his flesh a-creep.