Followed a pause. Then, in a lull, once, twice, the unmistakable crunch of a shod foot on gravel.
Another pause. Pharaoh was crouching close now, trembling from head to foot.
"Pharaoh! Pharaoh! Pharaoh, old cat, are—are you in there?"
The voice, strained and husky, came in at the open window. In the last lingering afterglow of dying day, a face, haggard and set, showed there, framed in the lead casement.
"Phar—— Ah!"
Pharaoh was up. Pharaoh had given a strange, coaxing little cry, such as a she-cat gives to her kittens. Pharaoh, lame and stiff, but with tail straight as a poker, was running to the window in the next room, was up on the sill, was rubbing against and caressing the haggard face like a mad thing.
There was a long, tense pause, broken only by a continuous purring. Then the creaking sound as of the lid of a wicker basket being opened. The purring ceased. The creaking came again, as if the lid were being shut. There came the crunch once more of stealthy shod feet on gravel, the click of the gate, and—silence!
Hawkley had come for, and found, his cat.