I walked hastily from the hotel into the park, taking the path which I had used in the pleasant June days when I had met her at the Monument. You know the kind of night it has been. Therefore when I reached the border of trees opposite my house, I hardly thought it necessary to seek the screen of the shrubbery; the arc lights were throwing the dancing shadows of tree limbs across the pavement, the rush of the wind drowned the noise of footsteps, and the street was deserted, I thought, except for the clouds of whirling dust that passed downtown like so many huge and ghostly pedestrians. I saw that a dim light shone through her blinds and that the house was the picture of peace, suggesting that the walls contained comfort, happiness, and the quiet of a peaceful family. So the fronts of houses lie to us!
At the very moment that this thought came, I saw from my position under the shadow of a spreading oak, which has not yet dropped its leaves, that I was not the only person who was observing the light behind the blinds. A figure was standing not more than a hundred feet away from me, peering out from beyond one of the light poles. It wore a vizored cap, I thought, and its head rolled this way and that on top of its spare, bent, and agile body. Now and then, however, it ceased this grotesque movement to gaze up at the window. One would have said that this creature was less a man than an ape.
I am not a coward. "Here," thought I, "is a tangible factor. My word of honor to Julianna is not broken if I seize this customer, whatever he may be, and make him explain the part he is acting." I stepped forward immediately, but he saw me before I had made two steps. From my bearing and the place where I had concealed myself, he knew at once, I suppose, that I had been watching him, for, turning with a swift motion, he plunged into the shrubs and evergreens behind him. That the thing was as frightened as a rabbit, there can be no doubt; the single little cry it gave forth was not a scream. You would have called it a squeal! In a jiffy I was after him, tearing through the branches among which, with a sinuous twisting of his body, he had just slid; a moment later I reached the open lawn again. The man had vanished.