“The answer has just come,” said Mary, when Quincy saw her later in the day, “but, I am sorry it is not as satisfactory as I could wish. Mr. Drake is away from Palermo at present, and beyond the fact that a Quincy Adams Sawyer had registered at the consulate about a month ago and has since left the town, they seem to know nothing about the matter.”
“Well,” said Quincy, “we have a starting point anyway, and more than we had in Bob Wood's case in the beginning. I shall go directly to Fernborough Hall to see my mother for a day or so, but I think I will not mention the real reason for my trip abroad until I have found out more. I will tell her that Tom and I are anxious to get to the continent as soon as possible, and that we will return to England later on. Then we will go down through Italy to Sicily, and start in there tracing the signer of that bill of exchange.”
“I think that is the best plan,” said Mary. “In the meantime I will keep in close touch with Mr. Merry here, and if another one of those bills of exchange comes in I will cable you, care of your bankers in London, the names of the endorsers.”
“Mary,” said Quincy as he took her hand at parting, and held it perhaps a little longer than was really necessary, “I can't thank you for all you have done for me. I am truly grateful, and wish there were some way in which I could show you my true appreciation.”
“Your thanks are all I want. Besides, you may be the means of bringing a very clever criminal to justice,” and the smile left her face as she said it, “for I am afraid that is all you will find. You must not hope too much for what seems the impossible.”
On their way to Fernborough that evening, Quincy and Tom decided it would be best not to mention the real object of their going to Europe, so Mr. Chripp thought it was only a pleasure trip. He did not object to his son going,—but he made one condition, that Tom should visit the village in old England in which he was born and bring him back a picture of the little thatched cottage in which Mr. Chripp had lived until the tales of high wages and better prospects in America had drawn him from his native land.
Quincy had said good-bye to all his relatives, friends, and acquaintances except Mr. Obadiah Strout. That gentleman should have no reason to say he had been snubbed.
When Quincy entered the store Mr. Strout was weighing some butter. Quincy noticed that the wooden plate and a sheet of thick paper were put on the scales before the butter was cut from the tub.
“Well, what can I do for you, Master Sawyer?” said Strout when the customer who had paid thirty cents a pound for butter including wood and paper had departed.
“I came to say good-bye. I am going to Europe.”