Lemerre touched Hanaud on the shoulder and pointed to a house in a row of houses.  All the windows except two upon the second floor and one upon the ground floor were in absolute darkness, and over those upper two the wooden shutters were closed.  But in the shutters there were diamond-shaped holes, and from these holes two yellow beams of light, like glowing eyes upon the watch, streamed out and melted in the air.

“You are sure that the front of the house is guarded?” asked Hanaud anxiously.

“Yes,” replied Lemerre.

Ricardo shivered with excitement.  The launch slid noiselessly into the bank and lay hidden under its shadow.  Hanaud turned to his associates with his finger to his lips.  Something gleamed darkly in his hand.  It was the barrel of his revolver.  Cautiously the men disembarked and crept up the bank.  First came Lemerre, then Hanaud; Ricardo followed him, and the fourth man, who had struck the match under the trees, brought up the rear.  The other three officers remained in the boat.

Stooping under the shadow of the side wall of the garden, the invaders stole towards the house.  When a bush rustled or a tree whispered in the light wind, Ricardo’s heart jumped to his throat.  Once Lemerre stopped, as though his ears heard a sound which warned him of danger.  Then cautiously he crept on again.  The garden was a ragged place of unmown lawn and straggling bushes.  Behind each one Mr. Ricardo seemed to feel an enemy.  Never had he been in so strait a predicament.  He, the cultured host of Grosvenor Square, was creeping along under a wall with Continental policemen; he was going to raid a sinister house by the Lake of Geneva.  It was thrilling.  Fear and excitement gripped him in turn and let him go, but always he was sustained by the pride of the man doing an out-of-the-way thing.  “If only my friends could see me now!” The ancient vanity was loud in his bosom.  Poor fellows, they were upon yachts in the Solent or on grouse-moors in Scotland, or on golf-links at North Berwick.  He alone of them all was tracking malefactors to their doom by Leman’s Lake.

From these agreeable reflections Ricardo was shaken.  Lemerre stopped.  The raiders had reached the angle made by the side wall of the garden and the house.  A whisper was exchanged, and the party turned and moved along the house wall towards the lighted window on the ground floor.  As Lemerre reached it he stooped.  Then slowly his forehead and his eyes rose above the sill and glanced this way and that into the room.  Mr. Ricardo could see his eyes gleaming as the light from the window caught them.  His face rose completely over the sill.  He stared into the room without care or apprehension, and then dropped again out of the reach of the light.  He turned to Hanaud.

“The room is empty,” he whispered.  Hanaud turned to Ricardo.

“Pass under the sill, or the light from the window will throw your shadow upon the lawn.”