If that ill-omened scrap were still in the empty house! … Worse still, supposing someone had found it? … It was a clue.
Professor Higginson lost no time. He took the tram, and when he reached the end of it, with infinite precautions of looking to right and left, pretending to go down side lanes, lingering at gates, he managed at last to comfort himself with the assurance that no one watched him—as indeed no one did. Every inch was, for him, alive with spies, and he exaggerated the importance of his movements, for he was a Don.
An hour or so after he had left the town he saw the neglected shrubs, the rotting gate, the beweeded gravel path; and, standing up gaunt and terrible before him, the Accursed House within its wasted grounds.
He went up stealthily to the door. It was locked. Still gazing over his shoulder with nervous precaution, he made an effort to find some postern, but the high wall was blind everywhere, and the courtyard at the back was enclosed upon all sides.
With a confused but terrible recollection of some tag which tells us that no man falls at once to the lowest depths of turpitude, and with a sigh for the relic of his honour, he tried
