For behind Walter Hine, the door in the far corner of the room was opening--very slowly, very stealthily, as though the hand which opened it feared to be detected.

So noiselessly had the latch been loosed that Walter Hine did not so much as turn his head.

Nor did he turn it now.

He heard nothing.

He leaned from the window with his elbows on the sill, and behind him the gap between the door and the wall grew wider and wider.
The door opened into the room and toward the window, so that the two people in the shadow below could see nothing of the intruder.