But the wall, not of brick but of ancient brownstone, was as high as the city’s regulations permitted, bare save in the rear of Orbit’s miniature palace, where it was covered by a thick, impenetrable curtain of ivy, sable and glossy like black satin in the moving finger of light.
All at once heavy footsteps pounded along the sidewalk to the mouth of the passage-way they had just left and a brighter beam was trained suddenly upon them. Dennis dodged instinctively but McCarty turned and faced it, calling cautiously:
“Is it you, Dave Hollis? We’ve not gone yet, just taking a look around.”
They had encountered the night watchman when they let themselves in at the west gate earlier in response to Eustace Goddard’s summons, and now he merely grunted in acknowledgment and passed on.
“There’s nothing more to be seen here,” Dennis remarked. “No one could cross that wall without a ladder and though they might climb that ivy it could not be done carrying a boy the size of Horace.”
“To say nothing of it being broad day and the back windows of all the houses in this row looking out at the performance,” McCarty interjected. “All the same we’ll stroll along to the Goddards’ kitchen door and back, Denny.”
The rear of Mrs. Bellamy’s mansion was as dark as the front and in Orbit’s also the lights had by now been extinguished. In the dead stillness their stealthy footsteps seemed to ring unnaturally loudly to their own ears. Only in the Goddard house did the dull glow from roof to cellar gleam forth through shrouded windows like sleepless, anxious eyes.
“’Tis almost unhealthy, the cleanness of everything!” Dennis looked about him as the flashlight circled over the spacious, immaculate court. “Not an ashcan nor so much as a garbage pail that a cat could hide behind! We’re wasting our time here, Mac!”
But McCarty did not answer. He had gone halfway down the tradesmen’s passage leading to the sidewalk and paused before a door in the side wall of the Goddard house. Dennis saw the light play in narrowing arcs over the paved ground before it and then settle to a mere pin-point as McCarty stooped. After a moment he straightened and came swiftly back, cat-footed despite his bulk. He was holding out some small object in his extended hand and as he reached his companion’s side he played the light upon it—a small, plain platinum watch, crushed beyond repair, on a pathetically short leather wristband.