But a man or ghost entering from the side, and playing any light around, would show Dick fully exposed.
The worst of that was that there was no rear guard flanking that door!
“Well,” Dick thought. “I can only wait and see what happens—and be ready to chase if I am discovered. Maybe I can catch and hold the ‘ghost’ till the others get to us.”
Careful not to scrape his soles in the cement, he gathered himself into a crouching, compact, alert figure.
Dim and hardly distinct to his straining eyes, there seemed to be in the slightly lighter gloom of the floor where the door opened, a shadow.
It might be an illusion of his taut nerves and tense mind, Dick decided.
He could not see out through the opening because he was almost in a straight line with the wall on that side.
He waited, becoming shaky with the strain, for what seemed like a dragging eternity.
The intruder must be scanning the landscape, judging conditions, he guessed.
When it seemed that he could not stay as he was another instant, the door was slightly moved, and then softly closed. So quiet was the operation that he did not hear the latch click. He had detected no change in the color of the door itself as it hung, slantwise to his view, and he heard no sound of feet on the cement.