a door top and bottom, but the lower door, which gave on to the
landing, was generally left open. Turning out the light in the
lobby, Sherston put his left hand on the banister and slid down in
the darkness, taking the dozen steps as it were in one stride.

As he reached the bottom he suddenly became aware that the door
before him, that giving on the landing, was shut, and that some
one, almost certainly a child--for there was not room on the mat
for a full-grown person--was crouching down just within the door.

Sherston felt sharply, perhaps unreasonably, irritated. Known
in the neighborhood as open-handed and kindly, it had sometimes
happened, but generally only in wintry weather, that he had come
home to find some poor waif lying in wait for him. Man, woman or
child who had wandered in, maybe, before the big door downstairs
was closed, or who, if still blessed with some outer semblance of
gentility, had managed cunningly to get past the Cerberus who lived
in the basement, and whose duty it was to open the front door,
after eight at night, to non-residents.

He felt in his pocket for a half-a-crown, and then, pretending
still to be unaware that there was any one there, he fumbled for
the spring lock.

The door burst open--he saw before him the shaft of glimmering
whiteness shed by the skylight, for since the Zeppelin raid of the
month before, the staircase was always left in darkness--and the
figure of his unknown guest rolled over, picked itself up, and
stood revealed, a woman, not a child, as he had at first thought.
And then a feeling of sick, shrinking fear came over Sherston, for