ion of
emotions--relief and panic, recklessness and caution, fear and elation.
He had found her. For the time being, he frantically assured his
trembling inner self, she was safe. The rest was up to him, and he felt
equal to it. He was intensely stimulated; for now, at last, in his ears
roared the rushing tides of life.

CHAPTER XIII

THE HOUSE IN THE CEDARS

Less than half a mile back, along the main road, Laurie found a country
garage, in which he left his car. It was in charge of a silent but
intelligent person, a somewhat unkempt and haggard middle-aged man, who
agreed to keep the machine out of sight, to have it ready at any moment
of the day or night, and to accept a handsome addition to his regular
charge in return for his discretion. He was only mildly interested in
his new patron, for he had classified him without effort. One of them
college boys, this young fella was, and up to some lark.

Just what form that lark might take was not a problem which stirred
Henry Burke's sluggish imagination. Less than twenty hours before his
seventh had been born; and his wife was delicate and milk was seventeen
cents a quart, and the garage business was not what it had been. To the
victim of these obsessing reflections the appearance of a handsome youth
who dropped five-dollar bills around as if they were seed potatoes was
in the nature of a miracle and an overwhelming relief. His mind
centered on the five-dollar bills, and his lively interest in them
assured Laurie of Burke's presence in the garage at any hour when more
bills might possibly be dropped.

While he was lingeringly lighting a cigarette, Laurie asked a few
questions. Who owned the big house back there in the cedar grove, on the
bluff overlooking the Sound? Burke didn't know. All he knew, and freely
told, was that it had been empty ever since he himself had come to the
neighborhood, 'most two years ago.

Was it occupied now? No, and Burke was sure of that. Only two days
before he himself had driven past it and had noted its continued
closed-up, deserted appearance. It was a queer place, anyhow, he added;
one couldn't get to it from the main road, but had to follow a blind
path, which he himself had blundered into by chance, when he was
thinking about something else. He had heard, he now recalled, that it
was owned by some New Yorker who didn't like noise.

Laurie strolled out of the garage with a well-assumed air of
indifference to the perplexitie