A. E. W. Mason

“ The small company penetrated into the town by the backways and narrow alleys. Daunay going on ahead, Patinot the last by some thirty yards, and Moreau keeping upon the opposite side of the street. Once they had left behind them the lights of the station square, they walked amongst closed doors and the blind faces of unlit houses. Frobisher's heart raced within his bosom. He strained his eyes and ears for some evidence of spies upon their heels. But no one was concealed in any porch, and not the stealthiest sound of a pursuit was borne to their hearing. ”

“ A sentence which Ann Upcott had spoken in the garden of the Maison Grenelle, when she had been describing the terror with which she had felt the face bending over her in the darkness, came back to him. He had thought it false then. He took back his criticism now. For he, too, imagined that the beating of his heart must wake all Dijon. ”

“ Yet, if there is a gang, it can hardly be that we are unwatched."
Hanaud disagreed. "This is a night for alibis," he returned, lowering his voice; "good, sound, incontestable alibis. All but those engaged will be publicly with their friends, and those engaged do not know how near we are to their secrets."
They turned into a narrow street and kept on its left-hand side.
"Do you know where we are?" Hanaud asked. "No? Yet we are near to the Maison Grenelle. On the other side of these houses to our left runs the street of Charles-Robert."
Jim Frobisher stopped dead. ”