He gave the iron gate a little push. It opened with a rusty "Harrumph" that made Phil shrink apologetically. But nothing else happened so after a minute he slipped through and began to peer around at the undergrowth and then to wander through it, softly calling "Lucky!" Occasionally he looked back in the direction of the jeep and once he saw the radio-helmeted heads and blue shoulders of three policemen. He wondered if the next time he looked he'd see Dr. Romadka, or the Akeleys, or perhaps Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck, and he shivered to think of how close he'd come to being caught--by someone. But the next shock he got came from something nearer. He had rounded the house, after having poked through its equally lifeless and overgrown back yard, when he saw a dark haired man peering at him through the fence. The most disturbing thing about the man was that he closely resembled the girl Phil had watched undress in the room across from his. The girl with hoofs. This man had the same vital, faun-like expression. Phil froze. But the man merely yawned, turned away, and shuffled off, humming or hooting a little melody that gave Phil goosepimples because it reminded him of something in his dream. For that matter, the whole experience was becoming very dreamlike to Phil: the silent house, the neglected garden, the futile searching, the melancholy memory of Mitzie's leave-taking, the powerful sense of a dead past. But the feeling that Lucky was near was still strong and after a bit Phil realized he would have to do something he had been shrinking from. He reluctantly mounted the steps to the front portal, reached for the knob, and then, to put off the evil moment a little longer, called "Lucky!" a few times along the shallow porch to either side. Someone behind him inquired pleasantly, "Are you looking for a cat?" Phil spun around guiltily and found himself facing a very old man as tall and frail as a ghost, and apparently as silent as one, since Phil hadn't heard him coming up the walk. His thin, wrinkle-netted face, crowned by close cropped white hair, was hauntingly familiar. It had something of the grandeur of a pre-Christian ascetic, yet there was a note of Puckish humor in it, as if its owner had arrived at a wise second childhood. Although Phil's heart was pounding at the alarmingly accurate question, he found himself liking the man at first sight. As he hesitated, the old man went on, "My interest, by the way, is purely academic--or else childish curiosity, which comes to the same thing." His eyes flashed impishly. "Is it by any chance a green cat?" he asked Phil rapidly. "No, you don't have to answer that question, at least not any more than you have already. I don't want to distress you. It's just that I have a mind that automatically makes the far-fetched deductions first." He beamed at Phil, who, though flustered, found himself grinning.