She continued her walk down Walnut Street until she came to Ninth, then she turned up to Market Street and entered the department store where she had made the inquiries that morning concerning Margaret Detweiler.
There were not so many people visiting the employment manager that afternoon as in the morning: perhaps everybody thought Saturday afternoon a poor time to look for a job. Mary Louise was thankful for this, and apologized profusely for taking the busy woman’s time again.
“I couldn’t find anybody by the name of Ferguson at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel now,” she said, “or any trace of Margaret Detweiler at all, there. But after I left the hotel it occurred to me that if you would give me the address that Margaret had while she was working here, I might make inquiries at the boarding house, or wherever it was that she lived. They might know something. Do you think that would be too much trouble?”
“No trouble at all,” replied the woman pleasantly. She told the clerk to look in the files again. The address was a number on Pine Street, and Mary Louise asked where that street was located, as she copied it down in her notebook.
“Not far away,” was the reply. “You can easily walk there in a few minutes.” She gave Mary Louise explicit directions.
It was a shabby red-brick house in a poor but respectable neighborhood. A colored woman answered Mary Louise’s ring.
“Nothing today!” said the woman instantly, without giving Mary Louise a chance to speak first.
“I’m not selling anything,” replied the girl, laughing. “I wanted to ask the landlady here about a girl named Margaret Detweiler who used to live here. Could you ask her to spare me a minute or two?”
“All right,” agreed the servant. “Come in.”
She ushered Mary Louise into a neat but gloomy parlor, and in a couple of minutes the landlady appeared.