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toward the back porch. Then, suddenly, I thought of something we had overlooked. We hadn’t thought of the grounds themselves. There were probably two acres of trees, flower beds, shrubs, and lawns around the place. If the money—or even Butler’s body—had been buried out here somewhere, it would take a gang of men with a bulldozer a week to search it all. We’d been stupid.
    But what could we do about it, if we had thought of it? Our only hope was that the stuff was in the house. If I didn’t find it there, we were whipped. The only thing to do was go on.
    I came to the corner of the porch and went around it to the rear of the house itself. In the darkness I could just make out the forms of two windows set close to the ground and partially screened by shrubs. They were just what I had been hoping to find—basement windows.
    I slipped up to the first and took out the small flashlight. Standing close to shield it with my body, I shot the tiny beam inside. The screen and the window were both dirty, but I could see the latch where the top and bottom sashes met. It was closed. I moved to the other window. It was latched too.
    Probably they all are, I thought. I stood back a little and sized them up. This one was better screened behind the shrubs. Getting down on my knees, I turned the light on again and shot it in on the hook at the bottom of the screen. I took out the screwdriver, pushed the blade in through the wire, and pried at the hook. It slid out, and the screen was free. I swung the bottom of it outward against the shrub and got in behind it.
    Taking the Scotch tape out of my pocket, I began peeling it off and plastering strips of it across the glass of the upper sash, crisscrossing it in all directions. Then I reversed the screwdriver and rapped smartly with the handle right in front of the latch. The glass cracked, but the tape kept it from falling. I slid the screwdriver blade through against the latch, and pushed. It slid open.
    I raised the bottom sash, swung the beam of light down inside, and dropped in. Pulling the screen back in place, I hooked it and closed the window. I took a quick look around the basement. This must be only part of it. It was a big room with a furnace in the center. Against the opposite wall was a coal bin, and beside it were some old trunks and a pile of magazines and newspapers. I saw a door, and went through it. This room held a washing machine and a lot of clotheslines.
    There was no use trying to search this now. What I had to do first was take a quick look at the whole house and size up the job—and make certain that maid wasn’t here. Diana James had said she’d be gone, but it wasn’t Diana James that was going to wind up behind the eight ball if she happened to be wrong.
    I went back in the first room and started swinging the light around, looking for the stairway. I’d just spotted it, over against the rear wall, when I stopped dead still and cut the light. I held my breath, listening. I could hear my heart beating in the dead, oppressive silence, and the hair along the back of my neck was still prickling. The place was making me jumpy.
    What I’d thought I heard was music.
    Music at four o’clock in the morning in an empty house? Nuts. I listened for another full minute and then flicked the light on again. I went up the stairs. There was a door at the top of them. I opened it softly and went through. I was in the kitchen.
    There was a window over the sink, but the curtains were drawn. That was something I had to check in all the rooms, so I could move around freely during the day. I examined the rest of the room. The door by the sink must be the one going out onto the back porch. The one on this side, beyond the stove, apparently led into the dining room and the front of the house. This left one more, besides the cellar door I’d just come through. It was at the end of the kitchen, and it was closed. I had to see in there. It should be the maid’s room.
    I eased over