"Now open the doors, and I will follow you until I reach the street. Do not speak, or I shall certainly shoot you," continued Precious sternly, still covering the bent, cowering form with the lifted weapon.
Scarcely daring to breathe, the foiled hag pushed the key in the lock, turned it sharply and opened the door.
"Go on down the steps while I follow," commanded Precious hoarsely, and still keeping her weapon close to the bewigged head, while she wondered at her own desperate bravery and silently prayed Heaven to keep Lindsey Warwick away until she gained her freedom.
But it was not to be. The villain rushed upon his own fate.
Just as his mother placed her foot on the first step to descend, he entered by an opposite door.
That suggestive tableau, his mother on the step, Precious in the open doorway above, covering her descent with a revolver, flashed upon his sight. He instantly comprehended the truth. His prisoner, with an undreamed of bravery, was fighting her way to freedom, and the cowed old woman was permitting herself to be driven to submission.
With the howl of a baffled wild beast, the startled villain rushed forward and struck back the little hand that held the weapon, perhaps with some faint impulse of filial alarm for the old mother who seemed in such deadly peril.
But his aim was misdirected or rash. The weapon dropped indeed from the little hand that grasped it, but as he bent forward it fell upon the step and exploded, and the bullet, whistling as it ascended, struck him beneath the chin, crashing upward to his burning brain. He sprang convulsively erect, then toppled backward in a lifeless heap, dead as suddenly as though by a lightning stroke.
At the same instant the old woman, jarred from her position on the steps by his sudden onslaught, lost her balance and fell, rolling over and over the steep narrow stairs until her body bounded against the locked door at the foot with a terrible velocity that broke her neck.