“Would detectives be able to pick up any clue to the missing man—and missing link?” asked Helen, thoughtfully.
“It’s a cold trail,” Dud observed, shaking his head.
“I don’t mind spending some money. I can send to Big Hen for more——”
“Of course you can. I don’t believe you realize how rich you are, Helen.”
“I—I never had to think about it.”
“No. But about hiring a detective. I hate to waste money. Wait a few days and see if I can get on the blind side of Mr. Grimes in some way.”
So the matter rested; but it was Helen herself who made the first discovery which seemed to point to a weak place in Fenwick Grimes’s armor.
Helen had been once to the poor lodging of Mr. Lurcher to “mend him up”; for she was a good little needlewoman and she knew she could make the old fellow look neater. He had got his glasses, and at first could only wear them a part of the day. The doctor at the hospital gave him an ointment for his eyelids, too, and he was on a fair road to recovery.
“I can cobble shoes pretty good, Miss,” he said. “And there is work to be had at that industry in several shops in the neighborhood. Once I was a clerk; but all that is past, of course.”
Helen did not propose to let the old fellow suffer; but just yet she did not wish to do anything further for him, or Sadie might suspect that her friend, Helen, was something different from the poor girl Sadie thought she was.