Perplexed, he struck another match and opened the door leading into the front room, and stood on the threshold a moment, looking about him at the linen-shrouded furniture and pictures.

This front room, closed for the summer, he had not before entered, but he stepped in now, poking about for any possible intruder, lighting match after match.
"I suppose I ought to go over this confounded house inch by inch," he murmured.

"What could have possessed me to leave the front door ajar this morning ?" For an instant he thought that perhaps Mrs.Nolan, the woman who came in the morning to make his bed, might have left the door open, but he knew that couldn't be so, because he always waited for her to finish her work and leave before he went out.

So either he must have left the door open, or some marauder had visited the house--was perhaps at that moment in the house! And it was his duty to find out.
"I'd better be about it, too," he thought savagely, "or I'll never make my train." He struck his last match, looked around, and, seeing gas jets among the clustered electric bulbs of the sconces, tried to light one and succeeded.
He had left his suit case in the passageway between the front and rear rooms, and now, cautiously, stick in hand, he turned toward the dim corridor leading to the bedroom.

There was his suit case, anyway! He picked it up and started to push open the door of the rear room; but at the same time, and before he could lay his hand on the knob, the door before him opened suddenly in a flood of light, and a woman stood there, dark against the gas-lit glare, a pistol waveringly extended in the general direction of his head..