But Harry lingered among his laurels, strongly impelled to go incontinently with his questions and his suspicions to the one friend of whose sympathy he felt sure, of whose truth and honour there was no question. Yet to that one friend he could never go, for was she not also the only child of Gordon Lowndes?
And what then was his wisest course? Should he do nothing, for the present, but return to Teddington, continue in the school, and watch this Scrafton from day to day? Or should he wait until Scrafton was gone, and then confront Lowndes with an uncompromising demand for explanations? Prudence advised one course, gallantry another; but the question was to receive a sufficiently sensational solution. It so happened that the burglary season had set in early that autumn in the Thames valley, and the Richmond police in particular were already greatly on their mettle. A certain young constable, at once desirous of his stripes and yet not a little alarmed by his own enterprise, had obtained leave to go on his beat in noiseless boots, and he came into Greville Road about the time that Lowndes and Scrafton went indoors. Not a sound came from his muffled feet, but that only seemed to make his heart beat the louder; for it was a very human young constable, and the majority of the recent burglaries had taken place at this very hour, while the families were at dinner.
Suddenly the young policeman stood still and all but shaking in his soundless boots: for a few feet from his nose, where he least expected it, in the garden of an empty house, was a pale face among the laurels, with dark eyes upon the house across the road. A palpable burglar choosing his window. A desperate fellow, judging by his face, and yet one to be taken single-handed if he were alone.
Harry did not hear the hand feeling for the truncheon, nor yet the leather tongue leaping from the brass button; but he smelt the dark lantern burning about a second before the light was flashed in his face.
"Wad-you-doing-there?"
The low voice was drunken in its excitement.
Harry recoiled among the laurels, guiltily enough, for he was horribly startled.
"Come-out-o'-that!" growled the young constable through his teeth to prevent their chattering, and with his words still running together. "Come-out-o'-that; you've-got-to-come-along-with-me!"
"Why?" cried Harry, frightened into self-possession on the spot.
"You know why! Think I didn't see you watching that house? Out you come!"