He moved a little, a bare few inches, then a few more--without a sound. In the light of the match, the Wolf must have seen the dismantled panelling and the open safe, and a masked figure crouched against the wall--and the Wolf would have marked the position of that crouched figure against the wall!
Again Jimmie Dale moved inch by inch--toward the window. And yet to attempt the window was to invite a shot and expose himself, for, dark as it was, his body would show plainly enough against the background of that lesser gloom of window square.
Jimmie Dale's eyes strained through the blackness across the room. He could just make out the configuration of the doorway. The Wolf was just on the other side of it, just inside the kitchen, he was sure of that. Almost a smile was flickering over Jimmie Dale's tight-pressed lips. There was a way--there was a way now, if the Wolf did not get him with a chance shot. He moved again, and reached the window, crouched low beneath the sill--and passed by the window.
And then the Wolf spoke from the doorway in a hoarse whisper, and in the whisper there was a low, taunting laugh.
"I been waitin' for you to try the window, but you're too foxy--eh? All right, my bucko--then I'll get you another way--with just one shot, see? And then--_good-night_! And say, whoever t'hell you are, thanks for crackin' the box for me!"
The man's voice came from the _right_ of the doorway--and the door opened _inward_--and he, Jimmie Dale, remembered that he had opened it _wide_. It was slow, very slow, this creeping inch by inch through the darkness. It seemed as though his breath were as stertorous as that breathing from above, and that the Wolf must hear.
There was a curious crackling noise, as of paper being torn--and then, quick, in the doorway, came a yellow flame, and the Wolf's hand showed from around the edge of the jamb, and, making momentary daylight of the room, a flaming piece of paper, tossed in, fell upon the floor.
There was a flash, the roar of the report--and another--as the Wolf fired! There was the sullen _spat_ of a bullet upon the panelling an inch from Jimmie Dale's head--and a sharp and sudden pain, as though a hot iron had seared his leg.
And now Jimmie Dale's automatic, too, cut flashes with its vicious flame-tongues through the black. Coolly, steadily, he was firing at the doorway--to hold the Wolf there--to keep the Wolf now in the position of the Wolf's own choosing. The paper was but a dull cinder in the centre of the room; twisted too tightly, it had gone out almost immediately.