d so
on, till it was time for dinner. He didn't hurry any over that either.

"I began to think that there was nothing doing, that he'd just come on
the trip for his health, but I remembered that he hadn't changed for
dinner, though it was by way of being a slap-up hotel, so it seemed
likely enough that he'd be going out on his real business afterwards.

"Sure enough, about nine o'clock, so he did. Took a car across the
town--mighty pretty place by the way, I guess I'll take Jane there for
a spell when I find her--and then paid it off and struck out along those
pine-woods on the top of the cliff. I was there too, you understand.
We walked, maybe, for half an hour. There's a lot of villas all the way
along, but by degrees they seemed to get more and more thinned out, and
in the end we got to one that seemed the last of the bunch. Big house it
was, with a lot of piny grounds around it.

"It was a pretty black night, and the carriage drive up to the house was
dark as pitch. I could hear him ahead, though I couldn't see him. I
had to walk carefully in case he might get on to it that he was being
followed. I turned a curve and I was just in time to see him ring the
bell and get admitted to the house. I just stopped where I was. It was
beginning to rain, and I was soon pretty near soaked through. Also, it
was almighty cold.

"Whittington didn't come out again, and by and by I got kind of restive,
and began to mouch around. All the ground floor windows were shuttered
tight, but upstairs, on the first floor (it was a two-storied house) I
noticed a window with a light burning and the curtains not drawn.

"Now, just opposite to that window, there was a tree growing. It was
about thirty foot away from the house, maybe, and I sort of got it into
my head that, if I climbed up that tree, I'd very likely be able to see
into that room. Of course, I knew there was no reason why Whittington
should be in that room rather than in any other--less reason, in fact,
for the betting would be on his being in one of the reception-rooms
downstairs. But I guess I'd got the hump from standing so long in the
rain, and anything seemed better than going on doing nothing. So I
started up.

"It wasn't so easy, by a long chalk! The rain had made the boughs mighty
slippery, and it was all I could do to keep a foothold, but bit by bit I
managed it, until at last there I was level with the window.

"But then I was disappointed. I was too far to the lef