By hunting down various Norths here and there, he one day came upon a woman who said,
“Why, I once knew a woman named Mrs Lawrence North. She lived in the same apartment house I did, and I remember her because she had the same name. No, her husband was no relation of my husband,—my husband has been dead for years.”
“Was her husband dead?” Wise inquired.
“No, but he better ’a’ been! He only came to see her once in a coon’s age. He kept her rent paid, but he hardly gave her enough money to live on! He was one of these hifalutin artistic temperament men, and he just neglected that poor thing somethin’ fierce!”
“What became of her?”
“Dunno. Maybe she’s livin’ there yet.”
To the address given Wise went, scarcely daring to hope he was on the right track at last.
At the apartment house he was informed that Mrs Lawrence North had lived there but that she had also died there, about three months previous.
The superintendent willingly gave him all the details he asked, and Pennington Wise concluded that the woman who had died there was without doubt the wife of the Lawrence North he was hunting for.
But further information of North’s later history he could not gain. After the death of his wife he had given up the apartment, which was a furnished one and had never been there since.