His fingers were testing the doorknob.

The door was not locked.
"Naturally, it wouldn't be locked," Jimmie Dale told himself grimly--and stepped inside.
He stood for an instant without movement, every faculty on the alert.
Far up above him a step, guarded though his trained ear made it out to be, creaked faintly upon the stairs--there was no other sound.

The creaking, almost inaudible at its loudest, receded farther up--and silence fell.
In the darkness, noiselessly, Jimmie Dale groped for the stairway, found it, and began to ascend.

The minutes passed--it seemed a minute even from step to step, and there were three flights to the top! There must be no creaking this time--the slightest sound, he knew well enough, would be not only fatal to the work he had to do, but probably fatal to himself as well.

He had been near death many times--the consciousness that he was nearer to it now, possibly, than he had ever been before, seemed to stimulate his senses into acute and abnormal energy.