There was a red glow in the sky over the trees of the garden. Burton wondered if it could be the morning glow. It was hardly time for that. He was speculating upon it idly when his ear caught the sound of returning footsteps in the back hall,--though this time they were so soft that if he had not been alert for any sound he would hardly have noticed them. He drew aside from the window, hid himself in the shadow of the long curtain, and waited. Unless the person in the hall entered this room, he had no right to question his movements.
The door was opened with noiseless swiftness, and a man stood for an instant in the opening. His head was bent forward and he carried a light in his hand,--whether small lantern or shaded candle Burton did not have time to see, for almost at the instant of opening the door the light was quenched. Burton was certain that neither sound nor movement had betrayed his own presence, yet after that single moment of reconnoitering, the light went out and the door was shut sharply. Burton sprang toward it, stumbled over the armchair he had himself placed in the way, picked himself up, and reached the door,--only to look into the blank blackness of the back hall. There was a faint quiver of sound in the air, as though the outer house door had jarred with a sudden closing, and he ran down the hall; the door was unlocked and yielded at once to his touch. For a moment everything was still; then he heard the clatter of feet on a board walk. It was as though some one, escaping, had waited to see if he would be pursued and then had fled on. Burton ran around to the rear of the house, thankful that the moonlight now made his way plain. There was a board walk running from the kitchen door to a high wall at the end of the lot, but the sound he had heard was momentary, not continuous, so, on the theory that the man had crossed the walk, not run down the hundred feet of it to the alley, he ran on to the east side of the house. There was no one to be seen, of course. Any one familiar with the location could have hidden himself in any of a hundred shadows. The lot was filled with trees, and one large oak almost rested against the house. It reminded him of Henry's remark at dinner about getting down from the second story by the oak on the east side, and he glanced up. It looked an easy climb--and two of the house windows were lit. On the impulse of the moment, he swung himself up into the branches. As he came level with the lit windows, Henry Underwood passed one of them, still fully dressed. He was so near that Burton was certain for a moment that he himself must have been discovered, and he waited a moment in suspense. But Henry had passed the window without looking out.