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again as he reached the gate and barreled through it. A race down the alley? No. The scruff was nimble as well as slippery; he threw a look over his shoulder, saw Quincannon in close pursuit, suddenly veered sideways, and flung himself up and over a six-foot board fence into one of the neighboring yards.
    In a few long strides Quincannon was at the fence. He caught the top boards, hoisted himself up to chin level. Some fifty yards distant was the backside of a stately home, two windows and a pair of French doors ablaze with electric light; the outspill combined with pale moonshine to limn a jungle-like garden, a path leading through its profusion of plants and trees to a gazebo on the left. He had a brief glimpse of a dark shape plunging into shrubbery near the gazebo.
    Quincannon scrambled up the rough boards, rolled his body over the top. And had the misfortune to land awkwardly on his sore leg, which gave way and toppled him to his knees in damp grass. He growled an oath under his breath, lumbered to his feet, and stood with ears straining to hear. Leaves rustled and branches snapped—his man was moving away from the gazebo now, toward the house.
    The path was of crushed shell that gleamed with a faint, ghostly radiance; Quincannon drifted along parallel to it, keeping to the grass to cushion his footfalls. Gnarled cypress and thorny pyracantha bushes partially obscured the house, the shadows under and around them as black as India ink. He paused to listen again. There were no more sounds of movement. He resumed his forward progress, eased around one of the cypress trees.
    The man who came up behind him did so with such silent stealth that he had no inkling of the other’s presence until a hard object poked into and stiffened his spine, and a forceful voice said, “Stand fast, if you value your life. There’s a good chap.”
    Quincannon stood fast.

 
     
    5
     
    QUINCANNON
     
    The man who had the drop on him was not the one he’d been chasing. The calm, cultured, British-accented voice, and the almost casual choice of words, told him that.
    He said, stifling his anger and frustration, “I’m not a prowler.”
    “What are you, then, pray tell?”
    “A detective on the trail of a thief. I chased him into this yard.”
    “Indeed?” His captor sounded interested, if not convinced. “What manner of thief?”
    “A blasted burglar. He broke into the Truesdale home.”
    “Did he, now? Mr. Truesdale, the banker?”
    “That’s right. Your neighbor across the carriageway.”
    “A mistaken assumption. This is not my home, and I have only just this evening met Mr. Truesdale.”
    “Then who are you?”
    “All in good time. This is hardly the proper place for introductions.”
    “Introductions be damned,” Quincannon growled. “While we stand here confabbing, the thief is getting away.”
    “Has already gotten away, I should think. If you’re what you say you are and not a thief yourself.” The hard object prodded his backbone. “Move along to the house and we’ll have the straight of things in no time.”
    “Bah,” Quincannon said, but he moved along.
    There was a flagstone terrace across the rear of the house, and when they reached it he could see people in evening clothes moving around inside a well-lighted parlor. His captor took him to a pair of French doors, ordered him to step inside. Activity in the room halted when they entered. Six pairs of eyes, three male and three female, stared at Quincannon and the man behind him. One of the couples, both plump and middle-aged, was Samuel Truesdale and his wife. The others were strangers.
    The parlor was large, handsomely furnished, dominated by a massive grand piano. On the piano bench lay a well-used violin and bow—the source of the passages from Mendelssohn that had been played earlier, no doubt. A wood fire blazed on the hearth. The combination of the fire and steam heat made the room too warm, stuffy. Quincannon’s benumbed cheeks began to tingle