The events of the night, from the moment he rang the bell at Okiu's house, began to pass through his mind in a sort of review; then, little by little, they grew hazy and indistinct; one seemed to melt into another in an unnaturally complete and satisfactory manner, and he found himself accepting weird conclusions with the cheerful ease of a man falling asleep.
He may have remained so in the chair for an hour; it may have been longer. At any rate he awoke at last with his head throbbing painfully. He sat for some moments gazing at the flaring gaslight; then he heard a clock from somewhere in the house strike once. He glanced at his watch.
"One-thirty," he said. "Phew! I've got a long night to put in."
He got up and looked at the bed. But there was nothing inviting about it; all desire for sleep seemed to have deserted him. As Nanon had suggested, the room had grown stuffy; and so he passed into the rear apartment and lifted the window. The stars still burnt palely in the sky as they had some hours before when he looked at them from the window of Okiu's house; small, swift-moving clouds were shifting across their faces; and all about was dark and still and mysterious.
But the night air was cool and he stood drinking it in for a time, and gazing down toward the dark loom made by the house of the Japanese at the far end of the open space. No light, no movement came from that direction. It was for all the world like a place deserted.
At this thought the secret agent smiled.
"That is the second time I've thought that same thing to-night. But not a great deal of movement or light is to be expected of any dwelling at this hour," he said to himself. "However, I should not be surprised if deserted were now the right word, after all."
He had closed the door leading into the bedroom, and so all was darkness in the apartment in which he stood. The quiet pleased him, and the cool air felt grateful upon his aching head and so he remained at the window for some time.
Then, suddenly, there came something like a dim burst of light. An instant served to show him its nature; upon the lawn was sharply silhouetted the outline of a window, with a blind but a few inches drawn.