It was now dark enough for him to venture across the carriage road and
make his way to the rear of the house. His first characteristic instinct
had been to enter openly at his own front gate, but the terrible
temptation to overhear and watch the conspiracy unobserved--that
fascination common to deceived humanity to witness its own shame--had
now grown upon him. He knew that a word or gesture of explanation,
apology, appeal, or even terror from his wife would check his rage and
weaken his purpose. His perfect knowledge of the house and the security
of its inmates would enable him from some obscure landing or gallery
to participate in any secret conclave they might hold in the patio--the
only place suitable for so numerous a rendezvous. The absence of light
in the few external windows pointed to this central gathering. And he
had already conceived his plan of entrance.

Gaining the rear wall of the casa he began cautiously to skirt its
brambly base until he had reached a long, oven-like window half
obliterated by a monstrous passion vine. It was the window of what had
once been Mrs. Peyton's boudoir; the window by which he had once forced
an entrance to the house when it was in the hands of squatters, the
window from which Susy had signaled her Spanish lover, the window whose
grating had broken the neck of Judge Peyton's presumed assassin. But
these recollections no longer delayed him; the moment for action had
arrived. He knew that since the tragedy the boudoir had been dismantled
and shunned; the servants believed it to be haunted by the assassin's
ghost. With the aid of the passion vine the ingress was easy; the
interior window was open; the rustle of dead leaves on the bare floor as
he entered, and the whir of a frightened bird by his ear, told the story
of its desolation and the source of the strange noises that had been
heard there. The door leading to the corridor was lightly bolted, merely