What Burton had expected to discover was perhaps not clear to his own mind. If he had analyzed the intuition he followed, he would have said that he was acting on the theory that Henry had looked into his room, and then, fleeing out of doors to throw him off the scent--by that side door to which he obviously carried a key, since he had let himself in that way shortly before--had regained his room by this schoolboy stairway. The feeling had been strong upon him that he was close on the trail of some one fleeing. But if in fact it had been Henry, how could he challenge him, here in his own room? Clearly he was within his rights here,--a fact that was emphasized when, after a minute, he came to the window and pulled the curtain down.
Burton dropped to the ground and retraced his steps around the rear of the house. Here he saw that the board walk ran down to a gate,--the gate in the rear by which he had seen Mrs. Bussey talking in excited fashion to a man, earlier in the day. The gate opened at Burton's touch and he looked out into an empty alley. It was so obvious that this would have been the natural and easy way of escape that he could only blame himself for folly in chasing an uncertain sound of footsteps past the gate around to the east of the house.
He found his way back to the surgery a good deal humiliated. The mysterious intruder had been almost within reach of his arm, and had got away without leaving a trace, and all that was gained was that hereafter he would be more alert than ever, knowing himself watched. It was not a very creditable beginning. Burton threw himself down on the couch, and his annoyance did not prevent his dropping, after a time, into a sound sleep.
Therefore he did not see how that red glow on the sky above the trees deepened and made a bright hole in the night, long before the morning came to banish the darkness legitimately.
Burton awoke from his short and uneasy sleep with a sudden start and the feeling that some one had been near him. The room was, however, empty and gray in the early morning light. As full recollection of the events that had passed came back to his mind, an ugly thought pressed to the front. Was it Henry who was persecuting the doctor? Or, rather, was there a possibility that it was not Henry? It certainly was Henry who had been abroad at two in the night,--that was indisputable. Burton had seen him too clearly to be in doubt. Was it not straining incredulity to doubt that it was Henry who had tried to enter his room a few minutes later? If it had been a stranger, would Henry not have been aroused by the opening and shutting of the outside door? It was not a pleasant idea that Miss Underwood's brother was the culprit in the case, but it appeared that he had already laid himself open to suspicion in connection with the series of petty annoyances which his sister had narrated. The local police might not be expert detectives, but they must have average intelligence and experience. And that Henry was moved by a sort of dumb antagonism toward his father was quite obvious.