To lower himself inside was the work of another ten or fifteen moments. The door of the pantry—for a pantry it was—had not been fastened, and he was in the lower hall, making for the stairs, while a slower man might have been trying to work his way through the window opening.
Up the kitchen stairs and into the main hall he rushed. There were some complicated bolts and locks on the front door, and it took him some time to overcome them. What was worse, he could not do it without noise.
Potter had a vision of a man in pajamas suddenly appearing at the top of the stairs on the second flight, with a lamp in one hand and a pistol in the other.
“Who’s that?” squeaked the man, evidently frightened out of his senses. “Hands up, or I’ll fire!”
But T. Burton Potter had the door open by this time.
“Fire and be blowed!”
He yelled this back defiantly as he rushed out and slammed the door behind him.
“I’m glad the fool didn’t fire, all the same,” muttered Potter. “It would have made racket enough to bring the policeman on post, anyhow, and I don’t want to see any of those gentry until I’ve had time to compose myself. Whew! I wish I were in good old New York.”
He walked leisurely along when he had turned the corner, for he knew that a running man, or even one walking swiftly, might be questioned by the first policeman he met.
“I don’t see anybody about. Just as well. I’ll get down to the ferryhouse and slip across. I hope there won’t be any one around there who knows me. You never know where the police will put a man.”