He grinned into the black heart of the night, streaked with lines of grey where therein entered the halo of the headlights, and then swung the car through an open, iron gate.

The motor fell to a drowsily contented murmur that blended with the cool swishing of the tires on wet gravel.
"Maclaren," said the other, as he stopped in front of the garage, "if everyone was as good a passenger as you I'd enjoy motoring; but after all, a car can't act up like a horse." He concluded gloomily: "There's no fight in it." And he started toward the house, but Maclaren, staring after the departing figure, muttered: "There's only one sort that's worse than a damn fool, and that's a young one." It was through a door opening off the veranda that Anthony entered the house, stealthily as a burglar, and with the same nervous apprehension.
Before him stretched a wide hall, dimly illumined by a single light which splashed on the Italian table and went glimmering across the floor.

Across the hall was his destination--the broad balustraded staircase, which swept grandly up to the second floor.

Toward this he tiptoed steadying himself with one hand against the wall.

Almost to his goal, he heard a muffled footfall and shrank against the wall with a catlike agility, but, though the shadow fell steep and gloomy there, luck was against him.
A middle-aged servant of solemn port, serene with the twofold dignity of double chin and bald head, paused at the table in his progress across the room, and swept the apartment with the judicial eye of one who knows that everything is as it should be but will not trust even the silence of night.