"Dreaming. That house has been empty since November. I happen to be the caretaker."
Hillard went back to his cab, dazed. No one there last night? Come, come; there was a mistake somewhere. It was out of the question that he had been in another house. He would soon find out whether or not he had dined there the night before.
"A cable-office!" he cried to the cabby. "Hurry!"
Once there he telephoned down-town and secured Sandford's cable address. Then he filled out a blank which cost him ten dollars. Late that night at the club he received his reply. It was terse.
You are crazy. House absolutely empty. SANDFORD.
CHAPTER VII
THE TOSS OF A COIN
Hillard made an inexcusably careless shot. It was under his hand to have turned an even forty on his string. He grounded his cue and stood back from the table. That was the way everything seemed to go; at tennis, at squash, at fencing, at billiards, it was all the same. The moment victory was within his grasp his interest waned. Only last night he had lost his title as the best fencer in the club; disqualified in the preliminaries, too, by a tyro who would never cease to brag about the accident.
"I say, Jack, what's the matter with you, anyhow?" asked Merrihew, out of patience. "A boy could have made that three-cushion, his hands tied behind him."