Page:Vance--The trey o hearts.djvu/154



ITH the further pledge that Alan would hear from him before dawn, the little brown man scuttled away. Not ill-pleased to be left to his own devices (whose proposed character Digby would never have approved had he so much as suspected them), Alan none the less deferred action until after midnight.

It was about one in the morning when he arrived, after taking elaborate precautions, in the neighbourhood of the Riverside Drive and before the home of his mortal enemy, a grim white house that towered, stark and tall, upon a corner. All its windows were dark but one—and that one, in the topmost tier, showed only a feeble glimmer, so slight that Alan almost overlooked it.

He believed with small doubt that Rose was a prisoner within those walls, and, this being the presumptive case, that small, high window of the light might well be hers. That it might equally well be another's was beside the point; the possibility remained, and while this was so he could not rest 130