use at
this hour in the evening, at a time when the parents were abroad and
Claude away on a holiday, he was obliged to be frankly inquisitive. An
investigating spirit was further aroused by the fact that in one of his
pauses, as he alternately advanced and halted, he was sure he heard a
footstep. If it was not a footstep, it was a stirring in the shrubbery,
as if something had either moved away or settled into hiding.

He was still unalarmed. Night-crimes were rare in the village, and
relatively harmless even when they were committed. The sound he had
heard might have been made by some roving dog, or by a cat or a startled
bird. Had it not been for the light he would scarcely have noticed it.
Taken in conjunction with the light, it suggested some one who had been
watching and had slunk away; but even that thought was slightly
melodramatic in so well-ordered a community. He went on till he was at
the foot of the steps, at a point where he could no longer descry the
glow in the upper window, but could perceive through the fanlight over
the inner door that, though the lower hall was dark, the electrics were
burning somewhere in the interior of the house.

He verified this on mounting the steps and peering into the vestibule
through the strip of window at the sides of the outer door. Turning the
knob tentatively, he was surprised to find it yield. On entering, he
stood in the porch and listened, but no sound reached him from within.
Taking his bunch of keys from his pocket, he detached his latch-key
softly, and as softly inserted it in the lock. The door opened
noiselessly, showing a light down the stairway from the hall above. He
could now hear some one moving, probably on the topmost floor, with an
opening and shutting of doors that might have been those of closets,
followed by a swishing sound like that of the folding or packing of
clothes. He entered and closed the door with a distinctly audible bang.

Listening again, he found that the sounds ceased suspiciously. Whoever
was there was listening, too. It was easy, by the light streaming from
above, to find the button and turn on the electricity in the lower hall,
whereupon the movement up-stairs began again. Some one came out of a
room and peered downward. He himself went to the foot of the stairs,
looking up. When the watcher on the third floor spoke at last it was in
a voice he didn't instantly recognize. He would have taken it for
Claude's, only that it was so fri