PROLOGUE. Notes from Jeffery Blackburn's Diary of the Case.

In giving evidence later, Andy Maxton swore it was the hoot of an owl that woke him.

* * *

For some moments he lay motionless, his body relaxed, his mind on that vague borderland between sleeping and waking, conscious of nothing save the liquid whisper of water hissing softly in his ears. The outlines of the room, dim in the light of a spent moon, were unfamiliar to him. Then his eyes moved to the long window framing the dark garden, and in that moment his mind cleared.

This was his bedroom in that riverside villa—Lady Evelyn Harnett's villa at Richmond. In the murmurous silence the pattern of his thoughts spun smoothly. Four weeks ago Andy Maxton had come to London from Australia. He had made Lady Evelyn's acquaintance through the Victorian League, when, home-sick and lonely, he had run across Ted Bissinger in the British Museum. Bissinger, a school-friend of Maxton's, was in the office of a film company, and, taking pity on the solitary young man, had introduced him to the League.

Over tea and buttered buns the League had arranged this week-end.

"You'll find Lady Evelyn very interested in Colonials," the secretary explained, "and there'll be other guests down there besides yourself." And before the young man, whose mind was feverishly reviewing the condition of his laundry, had time to reply, the secretary continued: "Lady Evelyn suggests the fourteenth. I take it that's quite convenient to you?"

Andy, his mouth full of buttered bun, nodded.

The house was cool and green and stood back in grounds that sloped gently towards the river. Comparing it with the confined grubbiness of his Bayswater room, the young man offered up a silent prayer for the ultimate salvation of the League and his hostess. Lady Evelyn was in the garden when he arrived.

Wearing heavy gloves and armed with a pair of garden shears, she was trimming her roses. This plump pink cocoon of a woman smiled vaguely upon him, paused in her arborial labours long enough to inquire his name and introduce him to the other guests—two Canadian girls and a lanky New Zealander named Insmith—and then, to his embarrassment, apparently forgot all about him.

A manservant named Keaton took him in hand, showed him his room, explained the position of the bath, and left the visitor hopelessly marooned in a terrifying maze of doors and passages. He was finally rescued by Insmith, who had been through all this before. The two men descended to the garden, where they found the Canadians wandering disconsolately. It was Insmith who suggested the walk, and the quartette spent the remainder of the afternoon exploring Richmond Old Church and examining the curious inscriptions on the tombstones.

Andy met his hostess again at dinner. Lady Evelyn's manner was even more vague. Over the joint course she became politely curious and asked him a number of questions about Canada. The young man countered these inquiries as well as he could, ignoring the sly twinkle in the eyes of the Dominion's daughters.

"And is it true," continued Lady Evelyn, "that your mounted policemen wear those charming red coats only on dress parades?"

Andy decided this false impression must be rectified, and on his halting explanation the hostess excused herself with a shrug and a smile that never reached her dark eyes.

"I feel," she murmured, "that this is the right time to ask Keaton to turn on the wireless." The awkward situation was carried off with an ease that was admirable, yet the young man could not help thinking that the charm, like the smile, was a little too mechanical. For the remainder of the meal, he watched covertly. Andy Maxton was no fool, and while one part of his mind was alive to the small-talk across the table, another was analysing the problem of Lady Evelyn Harnett. Before the meal was finished the young man was convinced that the pretty plump woman at the head of the table was hag-ridden by some dark anxiety she dared not face alone. Was it for this reason she had sought to fill her house with guests on this weekend?

Later they had danced to a programme of swing music broadcast from the B.B.C. Conversation consumed the interval before supper—conversation that centred around the Threat of War, What Struck Me Most in London, and, inevitably, the English Climate. They all retired, eventually, at the respectable hour of 11.15. Except for one disturbing incident, Andy Maxton's first evening at Malden Villa had been pleasant, suburban, and just a little disappointing.

* * *

The young man sat up in bed. A breeze from the open window chilled his bare chest where his buttonless pyjamas hung open. He pulled the garment about his broad shoulders and reached for the wristwatch lying on a small table near by. The luminous hands pointed to 3.30.

What had awakened him?

Certainly not discomfort. The bed was soft and warm under his body. Snuggling into the feather pillows, he had fallen asleep almost instantly, to dream of wide paddocks and fire-scorched tree-trunks. And now, even as he sat staring into the darkness, scattered fragments of that vision returned. He had been bird-nesting in that blackened forest, and had spied a magpie's nest tilting on a charred bough. A lone bird guarded it, and as he climbed, it was not a magpie that waited there, but a huge owl. It had screeched and swooped down on him beating wings...

An owl!

He found himself listening for that screech again. And his mind flew back to that incident in the drawing-room before supper. The dance music had faded and, as the partners stood waiting, a voice had apologized for the interruption and announced a police message. The concentrated sharpness that new impressions always make had etched phrases of that message on Andy Maxton's brain.

"One hundred pounds reward will be paid for information regarding the criminal known as 'The Owl'...he operates alone...takes his name from his habit of moving out after nightfall and giving a curious cry like the screech of an owl...lock your doors...The Owl flies by night..."

And as those last ominous words had faded and the music had swelled again, Lady Evelyn Harnett had uttered a bitten-off scream. When they turned, she had fainted to the floor. Servants hurried with restoratives. A few minutes later she had recovered and permitted herself to be led, leaning heavily and with her face pale and twitching, to the bedroom.

Twenty minutes later she was once more among armoured in that cold self-control, murmuring apologetically of a faulty heart. Nothing particularly sinister, perhaps, in the memory of a swooning woman, yet, linked with her strange detached manner of the afternoon, the incident returned to the young man's mind, touched with dark significance.

Then he heard the footsteps.

Gentle, light, and somehow rustling, they were moving down the passage outside his room. Maxton swept back the bedclothes and thrust out one leg, to pause in an agony of indecision. All the Colonial's horror of a breach of convention was on him, and his position as guest in this house made the situation even more uncertain. What would happen if he challenged this nocturnal prowler to discover some member of the household bent on legitimate business?

He pulled the bedclothes about him and waited.

The footsteps had passed now, swallowed in the ceaseless mutter of the river. The room was darker. Through the window he caught a glimpse of a sickle moon tangled in the trees. The luminous face of his watch glowed coldly. Somewhere in the room a beam cracked, and every nerve in Maxton's body leapt and throbbed and tingled. He found himself listening again, ears strained until the drumming of his blood merged with the river's whisper. Sweat had sprung out on his body; he felt it oozing down his bare chest, but he made no move to wipe it away. The unbroken undercurrent of sound in the room was almost hypnotic.

That is why he did not move until the voice screamed a second time.

The screams followed each other so closely that only a sharp, indrawn breath of terror separated them. They tore at the drumming silence with the incisive shrillness of ripping silk. And almost immediately the house responded. The place became alive with scuttering febrile movement. Voices were raised. Doors slammed. Lights flashed on. Footsteps, the heavy blundering footsteps of honest panic, ran and halted and ran again. Someone was hammering at a door.

Andy Maxton leapt from the bed, fought his way into his dressing-gown, and without waiting to switch on lights tore open the door of his room and raced out into the corridor. The brightly lit, carpeted length was unfamiliar to him. He stood for a moment, trying to focus that rising tide of perturbation. At one end of the passage a long window looked out on the dark garden. Then the front of the house lay behind him. He was about to turn when his attention was attracted by the sudden appearance of a figure at the far end, near the window. In the same moment the newcomer saw him, stiffened and paused, motionless.

Andy stared. "Good God!" he whispered.

The creature at the far end of the passage was swathed from head to foot in a long black robe that swept the floor. But the face above it was the face of a bird of prey! Two pale, lidless eyes blazed above the cruel hooked beak...