A Woman at Bay; Or, A Fiend in Skirts

by Nicholas Carter

To her baleful glances of utter hatred, he paid not the slightest attention, but he began at once to examine the room with great care, knowing well that there should be another means of entrance to and egress from it than the one he made use of. For Mike Grinnel, skilled as he was in the habits of the people he dealt with, would never have built for himself a den from which there was no escape after once he had entered it. Although there was no sign of a second door to be seen anywhere, Nick did not despair of finding one, and he began his search by first pulling out a sideboard which stood against the wall, and looking behind it.

He next had recourse to a couch, under which he searched for a trapdoor, but found none; and then his attention was attracted to an iron safe, not quite so high as his head, which stood in one corner of the room.

An iron safe is not a thing which is easily moved from its position, but Nick seized upon it, nevertheless; nor was he surprised when he found that it was so perfectly balanced on the wheels that supported it that it moved readily enough in response to his efforts.

And behind it was the door he sought. It was not over three feet high, and thirty inches in width, but there was a latch upon it, mortised into the wood, and there was a hole in the door, through which was passed a small steel chain that was attached to a rung fastened to the iron safe. This, of course, was intended to use for pulling the safe back into position after the door had been made use of, and the fugitive, whoever he might be, had made his escape.

Nick pulled open the door, thus making it ready for his use, and then quickly returned to Black Madge's side. He raised her in his arms, carried her to the little door, and, having unceremoniously thrust her headfirst through it, crawled after her, closed the door, and pulled the safe into place again with the aid of the chain.

He found himself now in a narrow corridor, faced by rough bricks on either side of him, evidently constructed between the party walls of the two buildings, and ten feet in front of him he perceived a flight of steps leading downward.

Again picking Madge up in his arms, he hurried down the narrow stairs to the bottom, and there came upon an iron door, fastened with a spring lock on the inside, which he therefore easily opened.

Passing through this, and closing it behind him, so that the lock snapped again, he found himself in the cellar beneath the building that adjoined the one in which Mike Grinnel's dive was located. Across the cellar, and at the far end of it, was a flight of wooden stairs.

Nick regretted at that moment that he did not remember what sort of a place was located next to Grinnel's, but he realized the imperative necessity of getting out of the building into the street as quickly as possible, no matter how he accomplished it, and therefore, when he carried his captive up those stairs to the top of them, and found there only an ordinary wooden door locked against him, he lost no time in kicking it open, and passing through.

When he did so, and when he came out in the room above, it happened that the battery of his own light gave out, and before he could determine his surroundings he was in utter darkness.