“No. There he is up in the window of his own private sitting-room, so don’t be pointing, Denny! He’s doing something to the flowers.”
By daylight the front of the classic white marble house was a blaze of gorgeous color from the window boxes on each sill filled with blooms of vivid but perfectly blended hue, with graceful vines trailing in slender, artfully trained tendrils down over the gleaming walls.
In one of the windows on the second floor the tall figure of Henry Orbit appeared, the delicate touch of silver in his dark hair plainly visible as he bent forward, and when he caught sight of the two below he inclined his head in dignified but amicable greeting.
“We’ll go to him now?” Denny asked.
“After we stroll down to the other gate and back. Did it strike you that there’s no sign of Bill Jennings on the block?” At the insistence of the inspector they had been temporarily provided with a key to the Mall, rendering them independent of the offices of either day or night watchman, but until now they had invariably encountered one or the other of these guardians.
“Maybe he’s having a bit of a chat with a maid in one of the houses,” Dennis suggested helpfully. “There’s small blame to him, for it must be mortal tiresome—”
“It looks to me as if the gate was open.” McCarty insensibly quickened his steps. “Come on, I want to see.”
The gate was swinging slightly ajar, but the passing pedestrians on Madison Avenue gave it no heed and the delinquent watchman was nowhere in evidence.
“Let’s shut it.” Dennis turned to his companion. “Bill’s a good fellow and there’s no need of getting him into trouble with the lords of creation like that Sloane if he’s just stepped out for a bit. He’ll have his own key to let himself in and these gates are damn’ foolishness, anyway.”
“He’s breaking a rule if not a law, Denny, and we’ve no call to be condoning it for him.” McCarty’s years of discipline returned to him. “We’ll be minding our own business, and get back to Orbit’s now.”