He had tried to keep it neat; but his housekeeping arrangements were most primitive, and cold as the weather had now become, he had no stove save a one-wick oil stove on which he cooked his meals—such as they were.
“You see,” Sadie told him, “this is my friend, Helen, and she seen you the other day when you—you lost that dollar, you know.”
“Ah, yes, wonderful bright eyes you have, Miss, to find a dollar in the street.”
“Ain’t they?” cried Sadie, grinning broadly at Helen. “Chee, it ain’t everybody that can pick up money in the streets of New York—though we all believed we could before we come over here from Russia. Sure!”
“You see,” said Helen, softly, “I had seen you before, Mr.—er—Lurcher. I saw you over on the West Side that morning.”
“You saw me over there?” asked the old man, yet still in a very low voice—a sort of a faded-out voice—and he seemed not a little startled. “You saw me over there, Miss? Where did you see me?”
“On—on Bleecker Street,” responded Helen, which was quite true. She saw that the man evidently did not wish his visit to Fenwick Grimes to be known. Perhaps he had some unpleasant connection with the money-lender.
“Yes, yes!” said Lurcher, with relief. “I—I come through there frequently. But I have such difficulty in seeing my way about, that I follow a beaten path—yes! a beaten path.”
Helen was very curious about the old man’s acquaintance with Fenwick Grimes. The more she thought over her own interview with the money-lender and mine-owner, the deeper became her suspicion that her father’s one-time partner was an untrustworthy man.
Anybody who seemed to know him better than she did, naturally interested Helen. Dud Stone had promised to find out all about Grimes, and Helen knew that she would wait impatiently for his report.