Seen in the fresh morning light the house looked commonplace enough.  Part of it was as old as Noah, but most was newish and jerry-built, the kind of flat-chested, thin French Chateau, all front and no depth, and full of draughts and smoky chimneys.  I might have gone in and ransacked the place, but I knew I should find nothing.  It was borne in on me that it was only when evening fell that that house was interesting and that I must come, like Nicodemus, by night.  Besides I had a private account to settle with my conscience.  I had funked the place in the foggy twilight, and it does not do to let a matter like that slide.  A man’s courage is like a horse that refuses a fence; you have got to take him by the head and cram him at it again.  If you don’t, he will funk worse next time.  I hadn’t enough courage to be able to take chances with it, though I was afraid of many things, the thing I feared most mortally was being afraid.

I did not get a chance till Christmas Eve.  The day before there had been a fall of snow, but the frost set in and the afternoon ended in a green sunset with the earth crisp and crackling like a shark’s skin.  I dined early, and took with me Geordie Hamilton, who added to his many accomplishments that of driving a car.  He was the only man in the B.E.F. who guessed anything of the game I was after, and I knew that he was as discreet as a tombstone.  I put on my oldest trench cap, slacks, and a pair of scaife-soled boots, that I used to change into in the evening.  I had a useful little electric torch, which lived in my pocket, and from which a cord led to a small bulb of light that worked with a switch and could be hung on my belt.  That left my arms free in case of emergencies.  Likewise I strapped on my pistol.

There was little traffic in the hamlet of Eaucourt Sainte-Anne that night.  Few cars were on the road, and the M.T. detachment, judging from the din, seemed to be busy on a private spree.  It was about nine o’clock when we turned into the side road, and at the entrance to it I saw a solid figure in khaki mounting guard beside two bicycles.  Something in the man’s gesture, as he saluted, struck me as familiar, but I had no time to hunt for casual memories.  I left the car just short of the bridge, and took the road which would bring me to the terraced front of the house.

Once I turned the corner of the Chateau and saw the long ghostly facade white in the moonlight, I felt less confident.  The eeriness of the place smote me.  In that still, snowy world it loomed up immense and mysterious with its rows of shuttered windows, each with that air which empty houses have of concealing some wild story.  I longed to have old Peter with me, for he was the man for this kind of escapade.  I had heard that he had been removed to Switzerland and I pictured him now in some mountain village where the snow lay deep.  I would have given anything to have had Peter with a whole leg by my side.