I dined in a small chop-house where I occasionally lunch, and took a large cup of strong black coffee.  When I went out into the night again I found that a heavy fog had settled down, and I began to feel again something of the strange and disturbing quality of the day which had ended in Arthur Wells’s death.  Already a potential housebreaker, I avoided policemen, and the very jingling of the keys in my pocket sounded loud and incriminating to my ears.

The Wells house was dark.  Even the arc-lamp in the street was shrouded in fog.  But the darkness, which added to my nervousness, added also to my security.

I turned and felt my way cautiously to the rear of the house.  Suddenly I remembered the dog.  But of course he was gone.  As I cautiously ascended the steps the dead leaves on the vines rattled, as at the light touch of a hand, and I was tempted to turn and run.

I do not like deserted houses.  Even in daylight they have a sinister effect on me.  They seem, in their empty spaces, to have held and recorded all that has happened in the dusty past.  The Wells house that night, looming before me, silent and mysterious, seemed the embodiment of all the deserted houses I had known.  Its empty and unshuttered windows were like blind eyes, gazing in, not out.

Nevertheless, now that the time had come a certain amount of courage came with it.  I am not ashamed to confess that a certain part of it came from the anticipation of the Neighborhood Club’s plaudits.  For Herbert to have made such an investigation, or even Sperry, with his height and his iron muscles, would not have surprised them.  But I was aware that while they expected intelligence and even humor, of a sort, from me, they did not anticipate any particular bravery.

The flash was working, but rather feebly.  I found the nail where the door-key had formerly hung, but the key, as I had expected, was gone.  I was less than five minutes, I fancy, in finding a key from my collection that would fit.  The bolt slid back with a click, and the door opened.

It was still early in the evening, eight-thirty or thereabouts.  I tried to think of that; to remember that, only a few blocks away, some of my friends were still dining, or making their way into theaters.  But the silence of the house came out to meet me on the threshold, and its blackness enveloped me like a wave.  It was unfortunate, too, that I remembered just then that it was, or soon would be, the very hour of young Wells’s death.

Nevertheless, once inside the house, the door to the outside closed and facing two alternatives, to go on with it or to cut and run, I found a sort of desperate courage, clenched my teeth, and felt for the nearest light switch.

The electric light had been cut off!