stealthily along the dark and uninviting street,
walking upon the opposite pavement and taking advantage of the shadow
of a high wooden fence which skirted it for some distance.

Smith pushed the gate open, and I found myself in a narrow passageway
in almost complete darkness. But my friend walked confidently forward,
turned the angle of the building and entered the miniature wilderness
which once had been a garden.

"In here, Petrie!" he whispered.

He seized me by the arm, pushed open a door and thrust me forward down
two stone steps into absolute darkness.

"Walk straight ahead!" he directed, still in the same intense whisper,
"and you will find a locked door having a broken panel. Watch through
the opening for any one who may enter the room beyond, but see that
your presence is not detected. Whatever I say or do, don't stir until
I actually rejoin you."

He stepped back across the floor and was gone. One glimpse I had of
him, silhouetted against the faint light of the open door, then the
door was gently closed, and I was left alone in the empty house.

Smith's methods frequently surprised me, but always in the past I had
found that they were dictated by sound reasons. I had no doubt that an
emergency unknown to me dictated his present course, but it was with
my mind in a wildly confused condition, that I groped for and found
the door with the broken panel and that I stood there in the complete
darkness of the deserted house listening.

I can well appreciate how the blind develop an unusually keen sense of
hearing; for there, in the blackness, which (at first) was entirely
unrelieved by any speck of light, I became aware of the fact, by dint
of tense listening, that Smith was retiring by means of some gateway
at the upper end of the little garden, and I became aware of the fact
that a lane or court, with which this gateway communicated, gave
access to the main road.

Faintly, I heard our discharged cab backing out from the _cul de sac_;
then, from some nearer place, came Smith's voice speaking loudly.

"Come along, Petrie!" he cried; "there is no occasion for us to wait.
Weymouth will see the note pinned on the door."

I started--and was about to stumble back across the room, when, as my
mind began to work more clearly, I realized that the words had been
spoken as a ruse--a favorite device of Nayland Smith's.

Rigidly I stood there, and continued to listen.

"All right, cabman!" came more distantly no