Up the one remaining flight of stairs darted the intruder. He flung
himself with all his weight and all his force against Bob Slack's door.
It wheezed from the impact, but its stout oaken panels held fast. Who
says the impossible is really impossible? The accumulated testimony of
the ages shows that given the emergency a man can do anything he just
naturally has to do. Neither by training nor by habit of life nor yet by
figure was Mr. Leary athletically inclined, but a trained gymnast might
well have envied the magnificent agility with which he put a foot upon
the doorknob and sprang upward, poising himself there upon a slippered
toe, with one set of fingers clutching fast to the minute projections of
the door frame while with his free hand he thrust recklessly against the
transom.
The transom gave under the strain, moving upward and inward upon its
hinges, disclosing an oblong gap above the jamb. With a splendid wriggle
the fugitive vaulted up, thrusting his person into the clear space thus
provided. Balanced across the opening upon his stomach, half in and half
out, for one moment he remained there, his legs kicking wildly as though
for a purchase against something more solid than air. Then convulsive
desperation triumphed over physical limitations. There was a rending,
tearing sound as of some silken fabric being parted biaswise of its
fibres, and Mr. Leary's droll after sections vanished inside; and
practically coincidentally therewith, Mr. Leary descended upon the
rugged floor with a thump which any other time would have stunned him
into temporary helplessness, but which now had the effect merely of
stimulating him onward to fresh exertion.
In a fever of activity he sprang up. Pawing a path through the
encompassing darkness, stumbling into and over various sharp-cornered
objects, barking his limbs with contusions and knowing it not, he found
the door of the inner room--Bob Slack's bedroom--and once within that
sanctuary he, feeling along the walls, discovered a push bulb and
switched on the electric lights.
What matter though the whole house grew clamorous now with a mounting
and increasing tumult? What mattered it though he could hear more and
more startled voices commingled with the shattering shrieks emanating
from the Braydon apartment beneath his feet? He, the hard-pressed and
sore-beset and the long-suffering, was at last beyond the sight of
mortal eyes. He was locked in, with two rooms and a bath to himself, and
he meant to maintain his present refuge, meant to hold this fort against
all comers, until Bob Slack came home. He would barricade himself in if
need be. He would pile furniture against the doors. If they took him at
all it would be by direct assault and overpowering numbers.
And while he withstood siege and awaited attack he would rid himself of
these unlucky caparisons that had been his mortification and his
undoing. When they broke in on him--if they did break in on him--he
would be found wearing some of Bob Slack's clothes. Better far to be
mistaken for a burglar than to be dragged forth lamentably yet
fancifully attired as Himself at the Age of Three. The one thing might
be explained--and in time would be; but the other? He felt that he was
near the breaking point; that he could no more endure.