The one place Potter could think of where trace might be had of the man was where he lived--over Herman von Essen's garage--and he took that as his destination. Ten minutes brought his car to the von Essen driveway and he turned in. His headlights cut through the dusk to the doors of the garage, for the short winter afternoon was speeding toward darkness. As he leaped out of the car he noted that the house was dark and paused a moment to peer from one window to another. No light was visible, and he wondered at it. His objective, however, was the garage, and he hastened toward it. The doors were locked. Through the window he had used the night before he looked in and could make out the presence of both the von Essen cars. He went to the door that gave on the stairway leading up to Philip's quarters, rapped, waited, but received no answer. He tried the door. It opened to his turn of the knob, and he climbed the stairs with what stealth he was capable of. He found no door locked. No one was in the rooms, which were in a state of confusion. Their condition was that of rooms hastily ransacked by a tenant snatching what was valuable and most convenient in unexpected flight. He descended and went to the rear door of the house. No one answered his ring or his knock. He was beginning to be affected by a sense of strangeness, by a certain numbing portent which seemed to weight the very air. The hairs at the back of his neck felt as though they were striving to stand erect, as if a chill breeze were touching them. He retreated from the door and peered at the house, at its lightless windows, its massive blackness against the evening sky. It wore a deserted, forbidding, secretive look; the look of a house concealing something awful within it. He was alarmed now, and his alarm was for Hildegarde. What did this thing mean? What did it mean to her? Where was she? Now he rushed to the front of the house, mounted the broad piazza and rang the bell long and repeatedly. Not satisfied with this, he battered the door with his fists. Suddenly the door opened, and Hildegarde stood there outlined against the darkness, a wisp of a thing almost to be blown away by a breeze, he thought. She uttered a gasp, a sob of relief. "Potter.... I prayed you would come...." She drew him into the house and closed the door behind him. CHAPTER XXVII "I was alone, alone," Hildegarde said, tremulously, "and I was afraid." "The house is dark," he said, peering about him. "I could make nobody hear--until you came. Where are the lights?" "Lights!... I was afraid in the dark, but I dared not light a light.... It would have been awful to light a light." "What do you mean? Where are the servants?" "I don't know.... Gone.... Let me touch you. Let me feel your arm.... Come, it's in here." He felt her pressing against him, sensed the shuddering of her body as she led him into the library. "There," she whispered. "On the floor.... There...."