Now he thinks, “Waterloo!   Are you going to be my Waterloo, young Tara Weston?”

He hesitates on the third floor landing, looking about, not really hoping to see Tara’s presence in the dark.   More likely sense it.   He takes a deep breath, then sticks out his tongue, like a snake smelling the air, in the hope of obtaining some kind of instinct about the girl’s presence.

“Okay, so you’re not ahead of me on the stairs,” he says aloud softly, “but which way did you go, beautiful Tara?   Down here to the third floor?   Or did you stop up on the fourth floor?”

He looks up toward the fourth floor landing as though some evil instinct has warned him that he has gone too far.   But then, as though not believing in instinct, refusing to believe he could have run down too far, he steps out onto the third floor and starts down the corridor toward the first doorway.

*      *      *

Turning away from the fourth floor window, Richie Travers looked back into the dining room.   “There must be some way to get past that maniac to reach the ground floor?” thought Richie.   He had parked his Corolla half a block from the Weston estate and thought, “If I could only get her to the car!”

He half considered trying to hide in the dining room until dawn.   But looking at the phosphorescent face of his wristwatch, he realised that dawn was still five hours away.   “Too long!   We could never stay hidden in here for five hours!”

“I think he’s stopped running,” said Tara Weston.

“What?” asked Richie, turning toward the beautiful blonde girl.

“That ….”   She gulped, looking as though she were about to cry for a moment.   “That man.   I think he stopped on the next floor.   If … if we’re really quiet on the stairs, maybe we can sneak past him and get down to the ground floor.”

“No, it’s too risky.   If he heard us, he’d catch us before we got ten metres.”

“But we could go down the back staircase.   It leads down to the garage.   We’ve got five cars …” she said, suddenly stopping.