“This time she shall not escape me,” she whispered, as with bated breath and cushioned footstep she tiptoed toward the spot where the remaining Shakespeare rested.
Now she was three stacks away. As she paused to listen she knew the child was at the same distance in the opposite direction. She moved one stack nearer, then listened again.
She heard nothing. What had happened?—the child had paused. Had she heard? Lucile’s first impulse was to snap on a light. She hesitated and in hesitating lost.
There came a sudden glare of light. A child’s face was framed in it, a puzzled, frightened face. A slender hand went out and up. A book came down. The light went out. And all this happened with such incredible speed that Lucile stood glued to her tracks through it all.
She leaped toward the dummy elevator, only to hear the faint click which told that it was descending. She could not stop it. The child was gone.
She dashed to a window which was on the elevated station side. A few seconds of waiting and the lightning rewarded her. In the midst of a blinding flash, she caught sight of a tiny figure crossing a broad stretch of rain-soaked green.
The next instant, with rubbers in one hand and ulster in the other, she dashed down the stairs.
“I’ll get her yet,” she breathed. “She belongs down town. She’ll take the elevated. There is a car in seven minutes. I’ll make it, too. Then we shall see.”
CHAPTER III
THE GARGOYLE
Down a long stretch of sidewalk, across a sunken patch of green where the water was to her ankles, down a rain-drenched street, through pools of black water where sewers were choked, Lucile dashed. With no thought for health or safety she exposed herself to the blinding tempest and dashed before skidding autos, to arrive at last panting at the foot of the rusted iron stairs that led to the elevated railway platform.