Henry reached up and switched off the electric lamp in the chandelier.
Then he stepped forward, found the piano, felt along the top, closed his fingers on the hat, and stood motionless. His first thought was that he would probably be shot.
There were steps on the porch. The front door opened and closed. Mr Henderson was standing in the hall now, but not in the parlour doorway. Probably just within the screen door. The hall light put him at a disadvantage; and he couldn't turn it out without crossing that parlour doorway.
'Who's there!' Mr Henderson's voice was quiet enough. It sounded tired, and nervous. 'Come out o' there quick! Whoever you are!'
Henry was silent. He wasn't particularly frightened. Not now. He even felt some small relief. But he was confronted with some difficulty in deciding what he ought to do.
'Come out O' there!'
Then Henry replied: 'All right.' And came to the hall doorway.
Mr Henderson was leaning a little forward, fists clenched, ready for a spring. He still had the cigar in his mouth. But he dropped back now and surveyed the youth who stood, white-faced, clasping a straw hat tightly under his left arm. He seemed to find it difficult to speak; shifted the cigar about his mouth with mobile lips. He even thrust his hands into his pockets and looked the youth up and down.
'I came for this hat,' said Henry. 'It was on the piano.'
Still Mr Henderson's eyes searched him up, and down. Eyes that would be sleepy again as soon as this little surprise was over. And they were red, with puffs under them. He was a tall man, with big athletic shoulders and deep chest, but with signs of a beginning corpulence, the physical laxity that a good many men fall into who have been athletes in their teens and twenties but are now getting on into the thirties.