"What have you two been doing down there?" was his very natural complaint. "I tried to listen, I tried to see; but beyond a few scattered words when your voices rose to an excited pitch, I have learned nothing but that you were in no danger save from the overthrow of your scheme. That has failed, has it not? You would have interrupted me long ago if you had found the child."
"Yes," I acknowledged, drawing him down the alley, "I have failed for to-night, but I start afresh to-morrow. Though how I can rest idle for nine hours, not knowing under what roof, if under any, that doomed innocent may be lying, I do not know."
"You must rest; you are staggering with fatigue now."
"Not a bit of it, only with uncertainty. I don't see my way. Let us go down street and see if any news has come over the wires since I left Homewood."
"But first, what a spooky old house that is! And what did the old gentleman have to say of your tumbling in on him from space without a 'By your leave' or even an 'Excuse me'? Tell me about it."
I told him enough to allay his curiosity. That was all I thought necessary,—and he seemed satisfied. Jupp is a good fellow, quite willing to confine himself to his particular end of the business which does not include the thinking end. Why should it?
There was no news—this we soon learned—only some hints of a contemplated move on the part of the police in a district where some low characters had been seen dragging along a resisting child of an unexpectedly refined appearance. As no one could describe this child and as I had refused from the first to look upon this case as one of ordinary abduction, I laid little stress on the report, destined though it was to appear under startling head-lines on the morrow, and startled my more credulous partner quite out of his usual equanimity, by ordering him on our arrival at the station to buy me a ticket for ——, as I was going back to Homewood.
"To Homewood, so late!"
"Exactly. It will not be late there—or if it is, anxious hearts make light sleepers."
His shoulders rose a trifle, but he bought the ticket.