We bent our steps toward the under-river tube, which carried a few late travellers to the railroad terminal where Kennedy purchased tickets for Glenclair.  I noticed that the conductor on the suburban train eyed us rather suspiciously as though the mere fact that we were not travelling with commutation tickets at such an hour constituted an offence.  Although I did not yet know the precise nature of our adventure, I remembered with some misgiving that I had read of police dogs in Glenclair which were uncomfortably familiar with strangers carrying bundles.  However, we got along all right, perhaps because the dogs knew that in a town of commuters every one was privileged to carry a bundle.

“If the Willoughbys had been on a party line,” remarked Craig as we strode up Woodridge Avenue trying to look as if it was familiar to us, “we might have arranged this thing by stratagem.  As it is, we shall have to resort to another method, and perhaps better, since we shall have to take no one into our confidence.”

The avenue was indeed a fine thoroughfare, lined on both sides with large and often imposing mansions, surrounded with trees and shrubbery, which served somewhat to screen them.  We came at last to the Willoughby house, a sizable colonial residence set up on a hill.  It was dark, except for one dim light in an upper story.  In the shadow of the hedge, Craig silently vaulted the low fence and slipped up the terraces, as noiselessly as an Indian, scarcely crackling a twig or rustling a dead leaf on the ground.  He paused as he came to a wing on the right of the house.

I had followed more laboriously, carrying the box and noting that he was not looking so much at the house as at the sky, apparently.  It did not take long to fathom what he was after.  It was not a star-gazing expedition; he was following the telephone wire that ran in from the street to the corner of the house near which we were now standing.  A moment’s inspection showed him where the wire was led down, on the outside and entered through the top of a window.

Quickly he worked, though in a rather awkward position, attaching two wires carefully to the telephone wires.  Next he relieved me of the oak box with its strange contents, and placed it under the porch where it was completely hidden by some lattice-work which extended down to the ground on this side.  Then he attached the new wires from the telephone to it and hid the connecting wires as best he could behind the swaying runners of a vine.  At last, when he had finished to his satisfaction, we retraced our steps, to find that our only chance of getting out of town that night was by trolley that landed us, after many changes, in our apartment in New York, thoroughly convinced of the disadvantages of suburban detective work.

Nevertheless the next day found us out sleuthing about Glenclair, this time in a more pleasant role.  We had a newspaper friend or two out there who was willing to introduce us about without asking too many questions.  Kennedy, of course, insisted on beginning at the very headquarters of gossip, the country club.