For more than an hour they discussed the forthcoming adventure. At midnight they left the apartment and took a roundabout way across town to the New Queen’s Mall. Waiting until Dave Hollis, the night watchman, had strolled to the other end of the block, they let themselves in at the west gate and slipped into the court between the Burminster mansion and the Sloanes’ smaller residence next door. The original plan had been to visit Orbit’s house first, but a light still glowed from the lower floor, indicating that the host and his guest, Sir Philip Devereux, had not yet retired. The Parsons establishment, however, was decorously dark, and they proceeded to its rear. There they paused to adjust handkerchiefs over the lower part of their faces and Dennis took stock of the situation. There was no moon and even the stars were partly obscured by scudding clouds, while the rising wind that swirled through the alley-like spaces between the houses betokened a coming storm.
“’Tis the equinox, no less, that’s on the way!” Dennis shivered more from nervousness than chill and his voice came in a muffled whisper from beneath the handkerchief. The flashlight in his hand wavered as he directed its ray against the house wall. “Look at that, now! If the old gentleman keeps any valuables here he must think that the crooks under his roof are enough protection from them outside, for he’s still depending on the old Kip electric system, that a babe in arms could disconnect!... Get you to the mouth of the alley, Mac, and keep an eye out for the watchman.”
McCarty obeyed. When, after an interval during which Hollis had passed twice, he heard a cautious hiss behind him and returned, it was to observe loose wires dangling innocuously from the wall and a yawning aperture in one of the windows where Dennis had removed a whole pane of glass.
“I made a good job of it,” the latter whispered complacently. “The telephone is cut, too, and the inside burglar attachment. The old gentleman’s not such a fool after all, for he’s got an installation that once set would warn him if a window or outside door was touched, but I put it out of business. Take off your shoes like I did and then come on; I’ve fixed the catch already.”
He raised the window inch by inch while McCarty removed his shoes, tied the laces together and hung them about his neck. Then Dennis crawled over the sill, drew his bulkier companion in after him and flashed his light quickly about.
“There’s the door. You said not to bother with any rooms downstairs except the old gentleman’s private study or sitting-room if he’s got one, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I can see the foot of the back stairs at the end of this hall, so shut off that light!” McCarty whispered in response. “You’re breathing loud enough to wake the dead!”
They fumbled their way to the stairs and up. The silence was oppressive and to the amateur house-breakers it seemed to hold an ever-increasing menace. They padded along in their stockinged feet through the wide hall, pausing at each doorway as McCarty directed his own electric torch within, but only stately drawing-rooms and a dining-hall huge enough for a banquet met their gaze.
“Wouldn’t you think he’d buy more furniture?” McCarty forgot their equivocal situation for the moment as he gazed disparagingly down a long portrait gallery, where Cavalier and Puritan forebears of the Parsons family looked down upon a few chairs placed at wide intervals against the wall. “There are not seats enough in all the parlors to hold a decent funeral and what there is is old and dull like the junk in Girard’s antique shop!”
“Maybe ’tis worth as much and more,” Dennis suggested sagely. “I’m not facing jail this minute, though, for a chance to look at it!—There’s a smaller room beyond that might be the old gentleman’s study.”