Built of ancient brick, it was three stories tall and looked as pompously respectable as a 19th century banker. It reposed sedately on a terrace that was as weedily overgrown as the square and that was surrounded by a high iron fence.
The only incongruous note was struck by a saucer-shaped object fully fifty feet across set on a framework atop the flat roof. Judging from the dull green of its underside, it might be made of copper. It looked almost as old as the house and quite as proper, as if the 19th century banker had decided to wear a green beret and dared anyone to notice it.
Phil crossed the street, mounted some steps and peered through the iron gate. He made out, beside the house's old-fashioned, knob door, a tarnished bronze plate which read: "Humberford Foundation."
He looked back uneasily. Where he figured the jeep to be, he could see the heads and black-clad shoulders of two men. The black reminded him unpleasantly of the sports togs worn by Billig and his yes men. They seemed to be arguing. One of them took a step up, as if he were getting into the jeep, but the other pulled him back and they hurried off—not in his direction, Phil noted with some relief.
He gave the iron gate a little push. It opened with a rusty "Harrumph" that made Phil shrink apologetically. But nothing else happened so after a minute he slipped through and began to peer around at the undergrowth and then to wander through it, softly calling "Lucky!"
Occasionally he looked back in the direction of the jeep and once he saw the radio-helmeted heads and blue shoulders of three policemen. He wondered if the next time he looked he'd see Dr. Romadka, or the Akeleys, or perhaps Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck, and he shivered to think of how close he'd come to being caught—by someone.
But the next shock he got came from something nearer. He had rounded the house, after having poked through its equally lifeless and overgrown back yard, when he saw a dark haired man peering at him through the fence.
The most disturbing thing about the man was that he closely resembled the girl Phil had watched undress in the room across from his. The girl with hoofs. This man had the same vital, faun-like expression.
Phil froze. But the man merely yawned, turned away, and shuffled off, humming or hooting a little melody that gave Phil goosepimples because it reminded him of something in his dream.
For that matter, the whole experience was becoming very dreamlike to Phil: the silent house, the neglected garden, the futile searching, the melancholy memory of Mitzie's leave-taking, the powerful sense of a dead past. But the feeling that Lucky was near was still strong and after a bit Phil realized he would have to do something he had been shrinking from.