Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/131

 He could feel a faint current of cooler air blowing against his face. And as he crept on, from somewhere in front of him, he could hear the steady patter of falling raindrops.

That meant, he felt, that a door or window was open at the back of the house. And it was a conclusion which did not add to his sense of comfort. But he could not afford to leave it unexplained.

He groped his way on, veering through an open door and threading his way about furniture, until he had traversed the full length of the house. And in front of him, as he had feared, he found an open window and the rain blowing against a gently-flapping curtain-end.

He studiously explored the sash of this window. A little tingle of apprehension went through him as he did so, for his inquisitively caressing fingers told him how a segment, large enough to admit a man's hand, had been cut out of an inner window pane comer. It had obviously been scratched with a diamond chip, tapped sharply until the crack followed the line of the scratch, and then lifted away with a suction-cap. A hand had been reached in and unlocked the window. And it was ten to one that the owner of that hand was still in the house where Kestner stood. It was the practised work of the practised house-breaker and porch-climber, and Kestner knew just what to expect from such gentry.

His first move was to lift his revolver from its none too convenient hip-pocket and drop it into the right-hand pocket of his coat. Then he stood listening again, straining his eyes through the darkness,