"It was too late to turn back, however, and I followed
the strangely soft footsteps of my huge companion across
the lower and larger loft, till he knelt down on a part
of the bare flooring and, after a few fumbling efforts,
lifted a sort of trapdoor. This released a light from below,
and we found ourselves looking down into a lamp-lit sitting room,
of the sort that in large houses often leads out of a bedroom,
and is an adjunct to it. Light thus breaking from beneath
our feet like a soundless explosion, showed that the trapdoor
just lifted was clogged with dust and rust, and had doubtless
been long disused until the advent of my enterprising friend.
But I did not look at this long, for the sight of the shining
room underneath us had an almost unnatural attractiveness.
To enter a modern interior at so strange an angle,
by so forgotten a door, was an epoch in one's psychology.
It was like having found a fourth dimension.
"My companion dropped from the aperture into the room so suddenly
and soundlessly, that I could do nothing but follow him;
though, for lack of practice in crime, I was by no means soundless.
Before the echo of my boots had died away, the big burglar
had gone quickly to the door, half opened it, and stood looking
down the staircase and listening.
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