“Driven from cover is right,” thought Patsy, intently watching him. “He’s out to play the eavesdropper, just as the chief suspected. What will he do next, after Nick has filled his ears with that fake story about a Philadelphia physician? It’s dollars to fried rings, now, that it will drive him to a move of some kind. It will be a chilly day, by gracious, if I fail to get next.” Nearly half an hour passed. Garside remained crouching on the veranda. Patsy continued to watch him from under the rhododendrons. The interview in the library came to an end. The crouching man crept quietly from the veranda, then stole hurriedly to a front corner of the house. He saw Nick emerge, watched him stride quickly down the driveway, and enter the touring car, departing without a backward glance; and then he straightened up, lingering for a moment, and fiercely shook his fist after the receding car. “Good enough! That shows your true colors, all right,” muttered Patsy, still watching him. “Now, you rascal, go ahead and cut loose. I’m right here to note your next move.” Patsy had not long to wait. Garside lingered only until the rear red light of the touring car had disappeared in the misty distance. He did not return to the house. Instead, now moving less cautiously, he hastened toward the rear grounds, passing the garage and seeking the narrow back street adjoining the Clayton residence. Patsy stealthily followed him. The back street was deserted. The scattered dwellings were in darkness. An incandescent lamp here and there, looking sallow and sickly in the gray fog was all that relieved the misty gloom. Garside soon brought up at a narrow wooden door in a high brick wall flanking one side of an old estate. He opened the door with a key and disappeared into the inclosed grounds. Patsy paused and briefly sized up the place. He could see beyond the wall the upper part of an old stone house, shrouded in darkness. An iron grille gate in front was all that broke the stretch of the grim brick wall, which was about seven feet high, and the cement capstone of which was surmounted with a threatening array of broken bottles and jagged pieces of glass, a vicious safeguard against unwelcome intruders. “Gee whiz! that says keep out, all right,” thought Patsy, while he made a closer inspection of the side wall. “It’s up to me to get in there, all the same. This may be where the party lives whom Garside said he was visiting on the night of the murder. Professor Abner Busby was the name he gave Nick, but it don’t appear in the city directory. I’ll have a look at the back wall.” Patsy already had tried the wooden door and found that Garside had locked it after entering. Near the rear corner of the wall, however, he found that the branches of the tree overhung the jagged capstone, and he promptly decided that that would serve his purpose.