CHAPTER XII.
THE STAIRS.
The passage ended in an arch, beyond which appeared a balustrade.
The corridor was wider than the archway; and Dick, having made the girl hide behind its projection, stepped delicately out upon the square landing, and looked over the rails.
The staircase mounted in a single broad flight from the floor of an entrance hall larger and more pretentious than he had expected. The attempt at an appearance of comfort was a failure, but money had been spent, and a sort of bad harmony between furniture and decoration forced itself upon the eye.
Across the hall, to the left, the front door stood open to the sunlight. In the wall facing him and the stair's foot were two closed doors, and others, doubtless, to match them, beneath the gallery on which he stood.
He had already made up his mind to lead the girl noiselessly down the stair and through the open door, and thence to make, if necessary, a running fight for it, with the chance of taking his pursuers in detail, when he heard a man's steps, accompanied by a faint tinkle of china, coming towards the hall, he judged, along the corridor immediately beneath that which he and Amaryllis had used.
Something, he remembered, had been said of breakfast, to be sent up, and he waited until there appeared, first the tray and then the man that carried it; a thick-set fellow, with heavy boots, shabby clothes, and a bald spot among the rough sandy hair of his crown.
It was plain that he was making for the stair, and Dick drew back behind the projection of the arch, opposite to Amaryllis. He saw the questions in her eyes and knew she could hear the approaching footsteps.