Fly by Night

'Owl of Darkness' is an adventure novel by Max Afford, featuring a character named Jeffery Blackburn. 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.