Page:Harold Macgrath--The girl in his house.djvu/29

 It became smothered by a sober, revealing thought. He ought to be very grateful to her. His loyalty had kept the moral fiber of him intact; he was still a white man.

Up the side of the back porch of this house in Seventy-second Street was a heavy trellis. Lightly and soundlessly he mounted this. He had learned to walk with that elastic-giving step, more feline than human. Once on the roof of the porch, he stretched himself out flat and waited for several minutes. He rose. With his penknife he turned the window lock—as he had done a hundred times before—raised the window with extreme care, and slipped inside. Here again he waited. He strained his ears. Six years in the wildernesses had trained them so fine that here in ultra-civilization ordinary sounds were sometimes painful.

Music! He stopped and took the automatic from his pocket. He tiptoed down the hall, careful to observe that there were no lights under any door fine. Some one was playing the piano down-stairs. Step by step he proceeded down to the main hall. Luck was with him; the hall light had been turned off. He crossed the hall and entered the