The Locked House

From the road, just before he descended to cross the bridge into
Brookhollow, he caught a gleam of light straight ahead. For a moment
it did not occur to him that there was anything strange in his seeing
a light in the old Carew house. Then, suddenly, he realised that a
light ought not to be burning behind the lowered shades of a house
which was supposed to be empty and locked.

His instant impulse was to put on his brakes then and there, but the
next moment he realised that his car must already have been heard and
seen by whoever had lighted that shaded lamp. The car was already on
the old stone bridge; the Carew house stood directly behind the
crossroads ahead; and he swung to the right into the creek road and
sped along it until he judged that neither his lights nor the sound of
his motor could be distinguished by the unknown occupant of the Carew
house.

Then he ran his car out among the tall weeds close to the line of
scrub willows edging the creek; extinguished his lights, including the
tail-lamp; left his engine running; stood listening a moment to the
whispering whirr of his motor; then, taking the flash light from his
pocket, he climbed over the roadside wall and ran back across the
pasture toward the house.

As he approached the old house from the rear, no crack of light was
visible, and he began to think he might have been mistaken--that
perhaps the dancing glare of his own acetylenes on the windows had
made it seem as though they were illuminated from within.