“I think you should put on a hat with a low brim and wear something with a high collar,” he suggested. “I’ll do the same, and in the dark we’re not likely to be noticed even if any of the gang are about.” Miss Merrill pointed out that as she was unknown to the gang, it did not matter if her features were seen, but Cheyne was insistent. “You don’t know,” he said. “We might both be seen, and then it would be as bad for you as for me. There’ll be unavoidable risks enough in this job without taking on any we needn’t.” They discussed their plans in detail, then Cheyne remarked: “Now that’s settled, what’s wrong with your coming and having a bit of dinner with me as a prelude to adventure?” “That sounds bookish. Are you keen on books? I’ll go and have dinner if I may pay my share, not otherwise.” Cheyne protested, but she was adamant. It appeared further she was a great reader, and they discussed books until it was time to go out. Then after dinner at an Italian restaurant in Soho they took the tube to Hendon and began to walk towards Hopefield Avenue. The night was chilly for mid-May, but calm and dry. It would soon be quite dark out of the radius of the street lamps, as the quarter moon had not yet risen and clouds obscured the light of the stars. In the main street there was plenty of traffic, but Hopefield Avenue was deserted and their footsteps rang out loudly on the pavements. “Let’s walk past it,” Miss Merrill suggested, “and perhaps we can hide and watch what goes on.” They did so. Laurel Lodge looked as before except that the lower front windows were lighted up. Building operations, however, had been much advanced in the six weeks since Cheyne’s last visit. The almost completed walls of a house stood on the next lot, and the house in which the supposed dead body of Cheyne had been abandoned was practically complete. “Half-finished houses are the stunt in this game,” Cheyne observed. “Suppose we go back to that next door to our friends and see from there if anything happens.” Five minutes later they had passed along the lane at the back of the houses and taken up their positions in what was evidently to be the hall of the new house. A small window looked out from its side, not forty feet from the hall door of Laurel Lodge. Cheyne made a seat of a plank laid across two little heaps of bricks and they sat down and waited. They were so ignorant as to the steps usually taken by a detective in such a situation that their idea of watching the house was simply adopted in the Micawberish hope that somehow something might turn up to help them. What that something might be they had no idea. But with the extraordinary luck which so often seems reserved for those who blindly plunge, they had not waited ten minutes before they received some really important information.