CHAPTER V
AN ENCOUNTER
ALAN, standing in the darkness of the hall, felt in his pocket for his matches and struck one on the box. The light showed the hall in front of him, reaching back into some vague, distant darkness, and great rooms with wide portièred doorways gaping on both sides. He turned into the room upon his right, glanced to see that the shades were drawn on the windows toward the street, then found the switch and turned on the electric light.
As he looked around, he fought against his excitement and feeling of expectancy; it was—he told himself—after all, merely a vacant house, though bigger and more expensively furnished than any he ever had been in except the Sherrills; and Sherrill's statement to him had implied that anything there might be in it which could give the reason for his father's disappearance would be probably only a paper, a record of some kind. It was unlikely that a thing so easily concealed as that could be found by him on his first examination of the place; what he had come here for now—he tried to make himself believe—was merely to obtain whatever other information it could give him about his father and the way his father had lived, before Sherrill and he had any other conversation.
Alan had not noticed, when he stepped into the hall
