Jimmie Dale was at the library door now, that, according to the plan the
Tocsin had drawn for the Magpie, and as he remembered her description
when she had told him her story earlier in the evening, was just at the
foot of the staircase. How dark it was! Though the stairs could be only
a few feet away, he could not see them. And how intense the silence was
again! Here, where he stood, the slightest stir from above must have
reached him--but there was not a sound.
His hand felt out for the doorknob, found it, turned it, and pushed the
door open. He stepped inside the room and closed the door behind him.
The safe, according to the Tocsin's plan again, was in that sort of
alcove at the lower end of the library. Jimmie Dale's flashlight played
inquisitively about the room. There was the window, the only one in the
room, the window through which the Magpie proposed to enter; there
was the archway of the alcove, with its--no, there were no longer any
portieres; and there was the safe, he could see it quite plainly from
where he stood at the upper end of the room.
The flashlight went out for the space of perhaps thirty seconds--thirty
seconds of absolute silence, absolute stillness--then the round, white
ray of the light again, but glistening now on the nickel knobs and dial
of the safe--and Jimmie Dale was on his knees before it.
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