The girl in his house Author:Harold MacGrath Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: behind her—a compelling pride in the observance of her father's laws of conduct— made it impossible for her to turn. What if he should learn some day that she ha... more »d run away in a crisis? So she went on, the bravest of the brave. In her travels she had learned how to use firearms—another injunction which had been laid down by that imperialistic parent of hers. She could shoot passably, but always in horror if at some living target. She decided to move in the dark, not to turn on the light of the torch until the very last moment. The storeroom door was open. There was a wide circle of light on the ceiling. A shadow rather than a human being crouched before the wall. She saw a black square hole. A safe in the wall! Here was a thief, taking something that doubtless belonged to Mr. Armitage. For her own sake she was a bit of a coward, but for the sake of some one she liked she was as brave as a lion. Click! went the key on her torch. "Stand up!" The burglar, a cap drawn over his eyes and a dark handkerchief hiding the lower half of his face, obeyed—less in terror than in fascination—and silently drew back from a box he had withdrawn from the safe. There was enough illumination from his own upstanding torch to outline her face and bring out the gorgeous patterns on her kimono. "Hold your hands out in front of you!" Again the man obeyed. "Come out. Now walk toward those stairs, and don't lower your arms." At the head of the stairs the burglar was ordered to march down, warned that the slightest suspicious movement would have serious results for him. She wondered if the man understood voices. Hers wasn't anything like her own; it was dry and thin and seemed to come out of nowhere, certainly not her throat. She kept the light of her torch focused squarely upo...« less