party. I like an even break or better, and this didn’t look like one.
So when a thin line of light danced out of the kitchen to hit the chair in the passsageway, I was three steps cellar-ward, my back flat against the stair-wall.
The light fixed itself on the chair for a couple of seconds, and then began to dart around the passageway, through it into the room beyond. I could see nothing but the light.
Fresh sounds came to me—the purr of automobile engines close to the house on the road side, the soft padding of feet on the back porch, on the kitchen linoleum, quite a few feet. An odor came to me—an unmistakable odor—the smell of unwashed Chinese.
Then I lost track of these things. I had plenty to occupy me close up.
The proprietor of the flashlight was at the head of the cellar steps. I had ruined my eyes watching the light: I couldn’t see him.
The first thin ray he sent downstairs missed me by an inch—which gave me time to make a map there in the dark. If he was of medium size, holding the light in his left hand, a gun in his right, and exposing as little of himself as possible—his noodle should have been a foot and a half above the beginning of the light-beam, the same distance behind it, six inches to the left—my left.
The light swung sideways and hit one of my legs.
I swung the barrel of my gun at the point I had marked X in the night.
His gunfire cooked my cheek. One of his arms tried to take me with him. I twisted away and let him dive alone into the cellar, showing me a flash of gold teeth as he went past.
The house was full of “Ah yahs” and pattering feet.