So they waited, counting each heavy step and listening with increasing dread as they came nearer. It seemed to take an interminable time for those feet to span the distance between the top of the stairway and the door of their room. They squeezed each other’s fingers tensely.
At last the footsteps ceased—not at their door, but across the hall!
Skippy gulped hard. Whoever it was, he was discovering that the door had been opened, the lock picked ... now he knew that his memorandum book was gone ... now he had noticed that the ladder had been taken from the closet.
They heard him rush out of the room and to the rear of the hall where they had left the ladder standing propped against the attic opening. Skippy could see the feeble glimmer of the lantern as it cast a lonely ray under their door.
Time stood still after that; they seemed to be in a state of suspended animation. Skippy could not hear Nickie breathe; Nickie listened in vain for a heart beat from Skippy’s breast. The only sound that reached their ears was that of the rushing footsteps coming back now along the hall and suddenly stopping before their door.
Then the doorknob rattled.
The door did not give, of course; the bed was too tightly jammed against it. The boys waited and presently they knew that there was a desperate effort being made to open the door, for the bed vibrated from the impact. Finally there came a furious pounding on the oaken panel.
“Fallon—Kid?” the familiar, deep voice called insistently. “You boys there?”
Skippy felt then that his time had come.