Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 144: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE DUNGEON 127 violence, according to the nature of the individuals with whom they were thus to be brought in contact. Page opened the cellar door as noiselessly as possible, and all was darkness and silence. He advanced a few steps, eroping about with his extended arms. In a few moments his hands encountered the banisters of a staircase; and up those steps he slowly and cautiously ascended, Sir Richard Stamford following close behind. Still all was darkness and silence in the house. They gained the ground floor in this manner; and on entering the passage at the head of the kitchen stairs up which they had just come, a faint glimmering of light, shed by some lamp outside or from some opposite window, peeped through the dingy fan-light over the low and narrow street- door at the farther end. This sickly and ineffectual gleaming was just sufficient to show the two fugitives where that door was situated, but did not enable them to catch the slightest glimpse of each other’s countenance. And still all was darkness and silence in the house. Slowly, noiselessly, and with painful caution, as if they were afraid of making even a board creak beneath their feet, they crept along the passage, taking five minutes to thread a little corridor of about as many yards in length. Page was in advance, and consequently gained the street- door first. _He passed his hand hastily up and down, and felt that it ~ was bolted; the key was, however, in the lock. To draw back the bolts without noise was not a very easy task, for they creaked alarmingly even when moved a hair’s- breadth; and so gradually was this portion of the momentous night’s work performed, that upwards of ten minutes were wasted thereat. But at length the bolts were drawn back _and the door was unlocked. It now struck Page that if he and his companion were both to sally forth together, they would be more likely to attract the notice of any of their enemies who might be lurking about than if they departed separately. But the commercial traveller dared not even trust his voice to whisper this proposal to the baronet, for he knew how even the faintest utterance of the human tongue is apt to sound amidst the deep silence in which a house is plunged at the GOMmiicdooks (S©)