It was necessary to find the people at once.

He had a feeling that his instant duty was to break some malign spell that lay upon the place--or upon himself.

For one of them was surely bewitched.
Out he strode to the middle of the street, between two rows of yellowing maples, and there he shouted again and still more loudly to evoke some shape or sound of life, sending a full, high, ringing call up the empty thoroughfare.

Between the shouts he scanned the near-by houses intently.
At last, half-way up the next block, even as his lungs filled for another peal, he thought his eyes caught for a short half-second the mere thin shadow of a skulking figure.

It had seemed to pass through a grape arbour that all but shielded from the street a house slightly more pretentious than its neighbours.