Low clouds were still obscuring the moon, and he had to blink a few times to accustom his eyes to the darkness. breath steamed as he climbed out of the car and gently clicked the door shut behind him. "You really fell head over heels this time, didn't you?" Once he reached the bottom he paused again, his ears pricked up, hiding as deeply as he could in the dart shadow of the wall and the trees. Then he gently slithered off the top, swinging down to the ground with his feet scraping on the brick. When the rope was wound in, he positioned the aluminum rod on the other side of the spikes, and let the rope down on the Semple side of the wall. "And what's wrong with that? It's about time there was more committed passion in life, anyway." At one time, he thought he heard a faint crackling of leaves and twigs, but when he paused to catch the sound more distinctly, he realized it was probably just a bird in the upper branches of the oaks. Every now and then he stopped to listen for dogs, but the whole estate was buried deep in darkness and silence. Gene skirted along the southern side of the house, almost as far as the gravel drive that came from the main gateway. He heard a low, erratic, rumbling noise, but he guessed it was a distant airplane turning toward Dulles. At a height of about ten or twelve feet, almost level with the verandah roof, he paused once more and listened for sound of the dogs. He just hoped that if he needed to climb back up his rope in a hurry, he could remember where it was.īreathing with tense, suppressed gasps, he reached up for higher branches and began to scale the creeper like a ladder. He straightened the revolver in his belt, and began to stalk carefully through the long grass, stopping every few moments to listen. A freight train hooted mournfully in the distance and up above the clouds a jet scratched its way across the night sky. Through the trees he could see twinkling lights from the Semple mansion, but there was no sound at all, and no sign of the prowling guard dogs. He sat astride the wall, winding the rope and catching his breath. In three minutes he had scrambled up to the top. I'm only going to take a quick look around the grounds and maybe a fast check through the windows." Christ, Maggie, I'm not going to burglarize the place. Semples mistakenly took me for a prowler.
All I have to say is that I was paying her a visit, and that the. "It won't do that, even if I'm caught red-handed.
0 kommentar(er)
