He knew that the door of the room _was standing open_! Therefore it had
been opened from the _inside_. Yet the window was fastened, also on the
inside.
Hardly was this realised when the conspiring silence of the hour was
broken by another and a more definite sound. A step was coming along the
passage. A certain bruise on the hip told Shorthouse that the pistol in
his pocket was ready for use and he drew it out quickly and cocked it.
Then he just had time to slip over the edge of the bed and crouch down
on the floor when the step halted on the threshold of the room. The bed
was thus between him and the open door. The window was at his back.
He waited in the darkness. What struck him as peculiar about the steps
was that there seemed no particular desire to move stealthily. There was
no extreme caution. They moved along in rather a slipshod way and
sounded like soft slippers or feet in stockings. There was something
clumsy, irresponsible, almost reckless about the movement.
For a second the steps paused upon the threshold, but only for a second.
Almost immediately they came on into the room, and as they passed from
the wood to the carpet Shorthouse noticed that they became wholly
noiseless.
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