Half a minute passed--there was the faint fall of a small piece of wood--into the aperture crept the delicate, tapering fingers--came a slight rasping of metal--then the door swung back, the dark shadow that had been Jimmie Dale vanished and the door closed again.
A round, white beam of light glowed for an instant--and disappeared.

A miscellaneous, lumbering collection of junk and odds and ends blocked the entry, leaving no more space than was sufficient for bare passageway.

Jimmie Dale moved cautiously--and once more the flashlight in his hand showed the way for an instant--then darkness again.
The cluttered accumulation of secondhand stuff in the rear gave place to a little more orderly arrangement as he advanced toward the front of the store.

Like a huge firefly, the flashlight twinkled, went out, twinkled again, and went out.

He passed a sort of crude, partitioned-off apartment that did duty for the establishment's office, a sort of little boxed-in place it was, about in the middle of the floor.