Page:Vance--The false faces.djvu/193

Rh While waiting on the doorstep of the corner house, he raked the street right and left with searching glances, and was somewhat reassured. Apparently he called at an hour when the Boche pickets were off duty; at the moment there was no pedestrian visible within a block's distance on either hand, nobody that he could see skulked in the areas of the old-fashioned brownstone houses across the way.

The neighbourhood was, indeed, quiet even for an upper West Side residential quarter. A block over to the east Broadway was strident in the flood of its nocturnal traffic; a like distance to the west Riverside Drive hummed with pleasure cars taking advantage of the first bland night of that belated spring. But here, now that the taxi had wheeled away, there was never a car in sight, nor even a strolling brace of sidewalk lovers.

The door opened, revealing the same footman.

"Colonel Stanistreet? I will see, sir."

Lanyard entered.

"If you will be kind enough to be seated," the footman suggested, indicating a small waiting room. "And what name shall I say?"

It had been Lanyard's intention to have himself announced simply as the author of that telegram from Edgartown. Obscure impulse made him change his mind, some premonition so tenuous as to defy analysis.

"Mr. Anthony Ember."

"Thank you, sir."

After a little the footman returned.

"If you will come this way, sir. …"

He led toward the back of the house, introducing