I said as much to Coroner Fenn, and he agreed.
"That's so," he said. "It'll be an awful errand. In the middle of the night, too. If you're acquainted, suppose you go there with the boys, Mr. Calhoun."
"I'm not personally acquainted, but Mr. Schuyler is my partner's client, though there's been little business of his with our firm of late. But, as a matter of humanity, I'll go, if you say so, and be of any help I can."
"Go, by all means. Probably they'll be glad of your advice and assistance in many ways."
I dreaded the errand, yet I thought if the police had had to go and tell Winnie and Aunt Lucy any such awful news, how glad they'd be to have somebody present of their own world, even of their own neighborhood. So I went.
As we had been told, the Schuyler house was only a few doors below the Avenue corner. Even as Mason rang the bell, I was thinking how strange that a man should go to a house where he desired to conceal his own name, when it was so near his own dwelling.
And yet, I knew, too, that the houses on Fifth Avenue are as far removed from houses just off the Avenue, as if they were in a different town.
Mason's ring was answered by a keen-eyed man of imperturbable countenance.
"What's wanted?" he said, gazing calmly at the policemen.
"Where is Mr. Schuyler?" asked the inspector, in a matter-of-fact way.