If he could have got down to the front yard of the house he was in, he would have done that. But there was no time for him to unlock and open the door he had just secured. He would be caught before he could pass through.
Even if there were any possibility of his escaping from the room in that way, the stranger, who was already opening the other door, would see that it was still open, for Chick certainly would not have time to close it.
This may seem a great deal for Chick to think in the instant required for a person to open a door after pushing down the latch. But a whole lifetime has been reviewed in a fraction of a minute, and Chick’s brain was working like a dynamo in this moment of deadly danger.
He must do something, and quickly. He did.
At the very moment that the door opened, he sprang to the stove and crouched down between it and the wall. He had noticed, from the first, that a space of a few feet had been left there, so that the heat of the stove would not set fire to the wall.
This was the one possible place of concealment in the gaunt, bare room, and it was not much of a one, at that. And it was hot—cruelly hot!
Squeezing himself into as small a space as he could, he peeped cautiously around the edge of the stove from the deep shadow that helped to conceal him.
“Holy mackerel!” he muttered. “This is a bright prospect. That man looks as if he were here for all night!”
It was the gigantic fellow he had seen working at the roller press in the room overhead. He seemed to have no fear of anybody being present besides himself, as he crossed the room to the table, and turned up the gas.
“What’s he going to do?” thought Chick. “Just as I supposed. He’s settling down for a long stay. And I’m roasting at the back of this stove. Great Scott! I feel as if I were done to a turn already. He’ll get the smell of me cooking before long. I can smell myself.”