He halted a moment with the knob of the door in his hand. The
porch was deep in shadows, but he thought he had seen something
move there.

"That you, Koku?" asked Tom in an ordinary voice. Sometimes his
gigantic servant wandered about the house at night. He was a
strange person, and he had a good many thoughts in his savage
brain that even his young master did not understand.

There was no reply to Tom's question, so he walked down the
steps and out at the gate. It was not a long distance to the
Nestor house, and the air was brisk and keen, in spite of the
fact that threatening clouds masked the stars.

Two blocks from the house he came to a high wall which
separated the street from the grounds of an old dwelling. Tom
suddenly noticed that the usual street lights on this block had
been extinguished--blown out by the wind, perhaps.

Involuntarily he quickened his steps. He reached the archway in
the wall. Here was the gate dividing the private grounds from the
street. As he strode into the shadow of this place a voice
suddenly halted Tom Swift.

"Hands up! Put 'em up and don't be slow about it!" A bulky
figure loomed in the dark. Tom saw the highwayman's club poised
threateningly over his head.