"He knows right enough, he does. Came down here yesterday afternoon with a friend. Seemed, from what I could hear, to want to give him something to eat out of that room. I put him down as dotty, but my! you should have heard him when he found out that the stuff had been lifted!"
"Was he disappointed?" Burton asked.
Words seemed to fail the plasterer. He nodded his head a great many times and spat upon the floor.
"That may be the word I was looking for," he admitted. "Can't say as I should have thought of it myself. Anyway, the bloke never stopped for close on five minutes, and old Joe—him on the ladder there—he came all the way down and listened with his mouth open, and he don't want no laming neither when there's things to be said. Kind of auctioneer they said he was. Comes easy to that sort, I suppose."
"Did he—did Mr. Waddington obtain any clue as to the whereabouts of the missing property?" Burton asked, with some eagerness.
"Not as I knows on," the plasterer replied, picking up his brush, "and as to the missing property, there was nowt but a few mouldy rugs and a flower-pot in the room. Some folks does seem able to work themselves up into a fuss about nothing, and no mistake! Good morning, guvnor! Drop in again some time when you're passing."
Burton turned out of Wenslow Square and approached the offices and salesrooms of Messrs. Waddington & Forbes with some misgiving. Bearing in mind the peculiar nature of the business conducted by the firm, he could only conclude that ruin, prompt and absolute, had been the inevitable sequence of Mr. Waddington's regrettable appetite. He was somewhat relieved to find that there were no evidences of it in the familiar office which he entered with some diffidence.
"Is Mr. Waddington in?" he inquired.
A strange young man slipped from his stool and found his questioner gazing about him in a bewildered manner. There was much, indeed, that was surprising in his surroundings. The tattered bills had been torn down from the walls, the dust-covered files of papers removed, the ceilings and walls painted and papered. A general cleanliness and sense of order had taken the place of the old medley. The young man who had answered his inquiry was quietly dressed and not in the least like the missing office-boy.
"Mr. Waddington is at present conducting a sale of furniture," he replied. "I can send a message in if your business is important."