The League of Night and Fog by David Morrell Page A

the name of the exit ramp from 401, the number of a side road, and a note about the silhouette of a greyhound on the mailbox outside the estate. Icicle nodded. This was the place, all right, but as he studied the grounds, he became more puzzled by the lack of obvious security.
    He stared at the waist-high wire fence ahead of him. There were no glass insulators on the posts. The wires were rusty. If the fence was electrified, how could the current be conducted? Whatever security there might be, it didn’t depend on the fence.
    Were there pressure-detecting grids beneath the grass
beyond
the fence? he wondered. He focused on the grass. Faint depressions from tires were evident. Tracks from a power mower, a big one, the kind a groundskeeper rode. But that kind of mower weighed more than a human would. Every time the lawn was trimmed, the alarm would have to be shut off, and that made the system worthless. All an intruder would have to do would be to enter the grounds while the caretaker was on duty. No, he decided, the only place to bury pressure-detecting wires was in a forest, and the forest would have to be within the fence, where hikers and large roaming animals wouldn’t press down on the soil with a weight sufficient to activate the system. But there wasn’t even a small band of woods within the fence. If there
were
sophisticated detectors, they hadn’t been placed down here but instead on top of the hill, around the mansion.
    He would soon find out. The sun had now descended behind the hill. Dusk would deepen to night, and the night was his friend.
2
    L ights glowed inside the house. Two spotlights came on, at the front and side of the house. Again Icicle felt puzzled. If the house had an adequate security system, there ought to be more outside lights. On the other hand, perhaps the few outside lights were intended to deceive, to make it seem as if the mansion were unprotected.
    Six of one, half a dozen of the other. He stood, emerged from the bushes, and prepared to climb the fence. But he froze when headlights blazed on the hill. A car engine droned. The headlights veered down the gravel lane toward the blacktop in front of the estate, disappearing into the night. The noise of the engine dwindled until the only sound was the screech of crickets.
    But there’d been
two
cars parked at the top of the hill. He couldn’t afford to assume that the estate was now unoccupied. He climbed the fence, dropped onto the lawn, and knelt, not moving, straining to detect a threat.
    He waited five minutes before creeping upward, periodically interrupting his cautious ascent to study the night. A hundred yards and thirty minutes later, he reached the edge of a tennis court on top of the hill. Wary of triggering alarms, he snuck toward a swimming pool, its placid water reflecting light from the mansion. A small structure next to the pool seemed to be a changing room. He ducked behind it, peering past a corner toward the five-stalled garage to his right, its doors all closed. He shifted his position and stared left toward the car, a dark Cadillac, in front of the mansion. Then he studied the mansion itself.
    It was peaked, with chimneys and gables. On this side, a flagstone patio led to closed French doors; beyond the windows, lamps glowed in a room lined with paintings and books. He tensed as a man walked past the windows. The brief glimpse showed the man was well-built and middle-aged, dressed in a blue exercise suit—he seemed to be alone.
    Icicle studied the windows in the other rooms. Most were dark. The few with lights didn’t seem occupied. Not seeing any guards, he sprinted from behind the small building near the pool, crossed the driveway, and dove below the cover of a concrete balustrade that flanked the patio, then studied the area before him. At once he realized that the patio, which went all along this side of the mansion and presumably along the other sides as well, held the only alarm system the mansion needed. An