“Now that’s a funny thing,” Big Tom said under his breath. He waited, and the dog bounced there, pawing at the pane, and the echo of his barking drifted out upon the night. “He’s shut in. He’s raising hell about it.”

Big Tom went on thinking. If the old woman was in there scared, with the lights on to drive away potential prowlers, she wouldn’t have the dog shut up that way. The dog would be downstairs, or outside, watching the place.

If Skip and Eddie were in there, though, messing around, shutting the dog up out of the way would be the first thing they’d do.

A faint smile touched Big Tom’s lips. He pushed the dark cap back off his head a little; a few locks of the stiff gray hair escaped. He scratched around at his hairline. “By God, that must be it. They’re in there doing something. Or they’ve just left.” The thought that they might have just escaped with the money sent Big Tom hurrying from the bushes to the back door. He stopped there, took an old pair of gloves from his pants pocket, and slipped them on his hands. He patted the gun against his belly. Then he tried the screen door. It opened under his touch.

Like a man made of smoke, he drifted silently through the outer porch, glancing at the washing machine and the tubs in passing, and entered the kitchen and paused to listen. The dog’s barking echoed sharply from upstairs. He couldn’t hear another sound. No voices, footsteps, no clatter of struggle or search. He wondered briefly if the house, except for the disturbed dog, could be entirely empty.

With the greatest caution he crept into the hall. He saw the open door of the pantry, the light burning within, the sewing room across the hall, beyond these more doors, and then, at a point where the hall turned in a right angle, the edge of a hall runner and a bright glow from above. He recalled the location of Stolz’s room as described by Skip, and noted that ahead and to the right a closed door had a bright, brass-colored, apparently new lock set into the wood.

Walking softly, walking on the edges of his shoes, he went to the door and tried the knob; the door opened at once. Inside the light burned in the overhead fixture. His gaze swept the room and took in the wardrobe, the open door of its clothes compartment gaping on nothing, the spilled drawers and other signs of search. Alarm caught him, froze him in the doorway. Everything seemed to hammer to a stop inside him: his heart, his breath, thought itself. He stood arrested by fright, gawking, until he remembered the hall and his unprotected back and moved on into the room.