Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/319

 a diminutive walled garden bathed in the soft light of an Italian moon. Having reasonably assured himself that he was unobserved, he betrayed an agility unlooked for in one of his years as he climbed over the heavy stone balustrade, swung himself to a nearby jointed iron water-pipe, and climbed nimbly down to a shuttered window. The shutters of this window he forced open with a small instrument of tempered steel taken from his pocket. Then he directed his attention towards the double sashes themselves. These were built to swing outward on heavy wrought-iron hinges and were clearly locked from the inside. A few moments' work with the same piece of tempered steel, however, had the sashes open, and the house-breaker without more ado climbed quietly and nimbly inside.

There he took out a flashlight and began a hurried but none the less methodic exploration of the small apartment. He noted the sleepy canary in a painted Swiss cage, the number of bowls and vases about the place, filled with spring flowers, Roman anemones and narcissi and daffodils and Parma violets in profusion, reminding him of the Piazza di Spagna steps and the Flower Market in the Stranger's Quarter. When he groped his way into a narrow closet and found one wall hung with an orderly array of woman's clothing, he gathered the folds of that subtly odorous raiment in his arms, and acting on an impulse that seemed uncoördinated and instinctive, buried his face in them. For one brief moment he drank in a sublimated fragrance which seemed to leave him both light of head and heavy of heart. Then he pulled