Wildly I swung my arms in all directions, but they touched only empty air and fog.

Still swinging my arms, stumbling amid flower beds, hunting in vain for a path, I continued to explore. My feet caught in a tangle of vines, and I came near sprawling on the wet grass. Righting myself with difficulty, I stopped and looked about me. The light from the room I had left was no longer visible. I was lost in a jungle that was only the Drew back yard. For a moment, I stood tense and silent. How I knew it I can not say, but I was conscious that I was not alone. Close at hand some human creature waited, holding its breath, alert, prepared. I did not see, I did not hear-I felt. Suddenly I lunged in the direction where I imagined it to be-and instantly my intuition was proved correct. I heard someone back away, and then quick heavy footsteps crunched on a gravel walk.

He had shown me the path, and for that I thanked him. Following as speedily as I could in his wake, I came to a gate in the high wall at the rear. It was swinging open. Through this, no doubt, the murderer had gone, and I stepped out into the alley. I could see no one; there was no sound whatever. Then I started and almost cried aloud-but it was only an alley cat brushing against my legs.

My quarry had vanished into the fog, and to look for him would be to hunt the proverbial needle in the good old haystack. It came to me then that I had been all kinds of a fool, rushing out of the Drew house like that at the moment of my gruesome discovery. I had not meant to come so far, of course-but here I was, and there was nothing to do but hurry back. How about Mary Will? Had she, perhaps, been the second person to enter the dining room and been frightened half to death by what she found there?

I swung back to reenter the garden-and at that instant the gate banged shut in my face. The wind? Nonsense, there was no wind. With a sickening sense of being tricked, I put my hand on the knob. I turned and pushed. As I expected, the gate was securely locked on the inside.

What should I do now? Wait here at the gate, holding my friend of the fog a prisoner inside? Useless, I reflected; there must be many ways of escape-a neighbor's yard on either side. Before I had waited five minutes, he would be well on his way to safety. No-I must get back to the house as quickly as I could. Since I could not return by way of the garden, only one course remained-I must follow the alley until I came to a cross-street, then travel that until I came to the street where Henry Drew's house stood. But what was the name of the street where it stood?

All at once I realized that I hadn't the faintest idea. No matter, I must get back to that front door somehow. A short distance down, an alley lamp made an odd shape in the fog. I hurried toward it.