"Yes; but I did not need that. What I wished to know was the name of the person with whom Chatham wanted to converse."
"Did you discover it?"
"The number of the telephone he gave is that of the Manhattan Chemical Company."
"And what is the Manhattan Chemical Company?"
"That is the question I asked people connected with the commercial agencies. They replied that they knew very little concerning this firm; because, although it has been in existence for a couple of years, it apparently never asks any one for credit, preferring to pay cash for all the goods delivered to it. I called at the office of the Manhattan Chemical Company to investigate on my own account. The office and store occupy the basement of an old ramshackle building, whose upper stories are rented out as business offices. The laboratory and manufacturing department are down stairs in the cellar. The store contains only a few chairs and a long counter behind which rise shelves containing rows of bottles with brilliantly colored labels. A few painted signs upon the walls vaunt the merits of Dr. Henderson's Cough Cure and Dr. Henderson's Liver Specific. I did not expect to find any one in on New Year's day. I was, therefore, surprised to see a solitary clerk sitting with his feet upon a desk and apparently absorbed in the reading of a newspaper,—a pale young man of the washed-out blond type, with watery green-blue eyes and a scant moustache which fails to conceal a weak mouth. He rose to greet me with an air of surprise which does not speak well for the briskness of trade in the establishment. Indeed, if we are to judge by the aspect of things in the office of the Manhattan Chemical Company, business in patent medicines does not appear to be flourishing just at present. By the way, did you ever hear of Dr. Henderson's remedies?"
"No; I cannot say that I have," answered Dunlap.
"That is the curious part of it," said Sturgis. "I have been unable to discover any advertisement published by this firm; and it is only by profuse advertising that such a concern can live."
"Yes, of course," exclaimed Dunlap, somewhat impatiently; "but what has all this to do with Chatham?"
"I don't know," replied Sturgis; "possibly nothing; perhaps a great deal."
"I asked to see Dr. Henderson," he continued, "at which the sleepy clerk stared at me in open-mouthed amazement. Dr. Henderson was not in; it was quite uncertain when he would be in. Indeed, as far as I was able to judge, Dr. Henderson appears to be a rather mysterious personage. No one knows much about him. Even his clerk admits that he has seen him only once or twice in the eighteen months during which he has had charge of the office. The Doctor attends to the manufacturing part of the business himself; his laboratory, which is down in the cellar, is a most jealously guarded place. No one is ever admitted to it under any pretext. He is evidently afraid that some one may discover the secret of his valuable remedies."