thing inside moved a little, then rolled over with a thud, and the door swung wide. What had lain against it, and now lay across the opening clearly visible in the light from behind us was the body of a woman with blood soaking into her hair.[Pg 104] [Pg 104] CHAPTER IX HOW WE ESCAPED FROM WHAT WE FOUND THERE We stood looking down upon her without speech. She was a tall, rather thin woman of about fifty; Irish by the look of her, and still with some share of earlier good looks. The hair that fell away loosely from her broad forehead was black and straight, showing only here and there a thread of silver. The large hands lay limply open, and the face was deathly white. She had fallen away from the door with her knees pressed closely against it, as though she had been trying to open it when the blow came. "Do you think she is dead?" Lady breathed at last. "Of course not," I answered, but I was very much afraid. I knelt down beside her and listened to her heart. I was not sure, but it seemed to me that it beat faintly; so faintly that it might have been only the drumming of my own pulses in my ears.[Pg 105] [Pg 105] "Can you find a mirror?" I asked from the floor. Lady glanced vaguely about the room, then came back to me with uncomprehending eyes. "No, I can't see any. What for?" she said dully. I sprang quickly to my feet. A chair lay overturned on the bare white boards of the floor, and I picked it up, setting it near the window. "Sit there," I said, "while I rummage," and I drew her to it, half forcing her down into it. She sat very still, mechanically obedient, while I looked around me. It was a strange little room to find in this decaying tenement. On the sill of the single window that gave upon the street blossomed an uneven row of geraniums. One pot had fallen to the floor and lay shattered, the fresh green of its broken plant piteous in a sprawl of scattered earth. The whole place bore evidence of an insistent struggle for the cheerfulness of a home. White, starchy curtains were at the windows; the walls were fairly covered with pictures, colored prints for the
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