The sudden sharp noise evidently startled others besides Bob.
Al, watching, saw the man who was evidently making some notes in the supply room, suddenly dash to the switch. Out went the light.
Al heard the scrape and rumble of a window being unfastened and thrown up. The man was listening, he judged.
Curt, by the water cooler, heard nothing but the faint sounds of the motor; at first he thought they were shots. When he saw the office light go out suddenly, immediately afterward, he thought someone in there had shot at some one else; but the door was flung open and he heard hurried feet pounding along the hall and almost stumbling down the front steps, careless of how much noise they made.
Curt could not go to explain to Al. He must see who that was going out of the quickly darkened office so swiftly.
Al needed no one to warn him. He crouched, tense and listening intently, outside the supply room door for a full minute. Absolute, torturing silence began to twitch his nerves. Nameless fears and countless uncertainties filled his mind. Was the man stalking him? Was he there at all? Had he ever been there? Was he human—or——?
Al heard a queer sound; at once he identified it. The window was being quietly pulled down.
Again he listened, watched, waited.
Curt, slipping down the banisters in the good, old-fashioned, speedy boys’ way, landed quietly at the foot of the stairs soon after the front doors of the office building closed.
But by that time whoever had emerged was far across the quadrangle and it was too dark to recognize him. There came the flare of the headlights of an automobile.