The night came that drew him out upon his second venture, and as he walked the dark street he felt in himself a great resemblance to a cat — a certain supple, swinging litheness. His muscles were rippling smoothly and sleekly under his spare, healthy flesh — he had an absurd desire to bound along the street, to run dodging among trees, to tarn “cart-wheels” over soft grass.
It was not crisp, but in the air lay a faint suggestion of acerbity, inspirational rather than chilling.
“The moon is down — I have not heard the clock!”
He laughed in delight at the line which an early memory had endowed with a hushed awesome beauty.
He passed a man and then another a quarter of mile afterward.
He was on Philmore Street now and it was very dark. He blessed the city council for not having put in new lamp-posts as a recent budget had recommended. Here was the red-brick Sterner residence which marked the beginning of the avenue; here was the Jordon house, the Eisenhaurs’, the Dents’, the Markhams’, the Frasers’; the Hawkins’, where he had been a guest; the Willoughbys’, the Everett’s, colonial and ornate; the little cottage where lived the Watts old maids between the imposing fronts of the Macys’ and the Krupstadts’; the Craigs —
Ah . . . THERE! He paused, wavered violently — far up the street was a blot, a man walking, possibly a policeman. After an eternal second be found himself following the vague, ragged shadow of a lamp-post across a lawn, running bent very low. Then he was standing tense, without breath or need of it, in the shadow of his limestone prey.
Interminably he listened — a mile off a cat howled, a hundred yards away another took up the hymn in a demoniacal snarl, and he felt his heart dip and swoop, acting as shock-absorber for his mind. There were other sounds; the faintest fragment of song far away; strident, gossiping laughter from a back porch diagonally across the alley; and crickets, crickets singing in the patched, patterned, moonlit grass of the yard. Within the house there seemed to lie an ominous silence. He was glad he did not know who lived here.
His slight shiver hardened to steel; the steel softened and his nerves became pliable as leather; gripping his hands he gratefully found them supple, and taking out knife and pliers he went to work on the screen.
So sure was he that he was unobserved that, from the dining-room where in a minute he found himself, he leaned out and carefully pulled the screen up into position, balancing it so it would neither fall by chance nor be a serious obstacle to a sudden exit.
Then he put the open knife in his coat pocket, took out his pocket-flash, and tiptoed around the room.
There was nothing here he could use — the dining-room had never been included in his plans for the town was too small to permit disposing of silver.
As a matter of fact his plans were of the vaguest. He had found that with a mind like his,............