A Business Career

XXIV

159 heart throbbed furiously; surely, she felt, he must be able to hear it beating. With cat-like tread Ross moved toward the front the office, and passed beyond Stella's line of vision.Not daring to change her position, she waited in terrified suspense for several minutes—the time seemed an hour to her strained nerves— and then a heavy weight came suddenly against the door of her hiding-place, and the key was immediately turned in the lock. Stella felt the wardrobe moving upon its castors. She shrieked in vagueterror, and then swooning, knew no more. XXIV. Stella, upon regaining consciousness, found herself in the dark. Whether night had fallen or not she had no means of knowing, nor could she imagine how many hours she had lain there. With consciousness her terror returned, and she screamed and beat her hands against the sides of her narrow prison. But in a fewmoments her calmer judgment resumed its sway, and she began to study the situation. She had undoubtedly been locked up for some little time. She need fear no bodily harm from Ross, for he had locked her up merely to secure time for his own escape.The clothes-press, of which she had felt such an unreasoning terror, had saved her life; but for its presence, Ross might have resorted to violence to gain the time he had so easilysecured by locking her up. In all reasonable probability she would not be able to escape before morning, by which time any act of violence would have been discovered, to the great increase of Ross's peril. loo Stella tried the door. It did not move.Shetried it again,bracing herself against the backof the clothes-press and bringingall her strength to bear. It resisted her efforts at first, but finally yielded. She heard the lock crack. The fastenings gave way; the door moved outward about three inches, and—stopped. It was near nightfall, as Stella now perceived,but she could not see what obstructed the outward movement of the door. Putting out her hand to feel, it came in contact with a cold hard, smooth surface, very much like iron. Shepeered through the opening, and ran her hand once or twice up and down the barrier, before fully grasping the situation. The iron safe, she knew, stood near a corner, leaving about two feet between it and the wall. Into this space Ross, after turning the key on Stella, had pushed the clothes-press;—being on rollers, a strong man could move it with some effort, and Ross at that moment could have moved mountains. It filled the space so completely asto preventthe opening ofthe door for more than a handsbreadth, while the wall would equallyprevent escapeif the prisoner should by any possibility succeed in breaking through the thin panels at the back of the clothes-press. Stella realized the apparent hopelessness of her position, and was in despair. The prospect of spending the night in this dungeon would have appalled a stouter heart. She put her wits to work to devise some means of escape. She tried the ends of the wardrobe, but they were stout and did not yield in the least to her efforts. She had read somewhere of a young man, inadvertently locked up in one of a ship's water-tight compartments, who had finally loi attracted attention to his dangerous plight bypounding with his shoe upon the iron lining of the vessel. Stella drew off one of her small shoes and hammered with the heel upon the end of the wardrobe, in the faint hope that some passing janitor or watchman might hear her from the corridor. But her efforts proved unavailing, and she finally sank exhausted to thefloor. Til try the top," she thought with a sudden inspiration, after resting a while. There wereseveral packagesof stationery lying on the bottom of the clothes-press. By piling these one upon another she was ableto reach and push against the top of the wardrobe.To her joy it yielded—not a great deal, for her position did not permit her to exert much of an upward pressure—but enough to indicate that the top was not securely fastened down, but held in place, at least in part,by its own weight.With renewed hope and energy Stella groped about her prison until she found a slight projection upon which to...