�Oh, yes—it was 104.�
�Well, then, the new building has swallowed it up—that�s certain.�
He tilted his head back and surveyed the half-finished front of a brick and limestone flat-house that reared its flimsy elegance above a row of tottering tenements and stables.
�Dead sure?� he repeated.
�Yes,� said Granice, discouraged. �And even if I hadn�t been, I know the garage was just opposite Leffler�s over there.� He pointed across the street to a tumble-down stable with a blotched sign on which the words �Livery and Boarding� were still faintly discernible.
The young man dashed across to the opposite pavement. �Well, that�s something—may get a clue there. Leffler�s—same name there, anyhow. You remember that name?�
�Yes—distinctly.�
Granice had felt a return of confidence since he had enlisted the interest of the Explorer�s �smartest� reporter. If there were moments when he hardly believed his own story, there were others when it seemed impossible that every one should not believe it; and young Peter McCarren, peering, listening, questioning, jotting down notes, inspired him with an exquisite sense of security. McCarren had fastened on the case at once, �like a leech,� as he phrased it—jumped at it, thrilled to it, and settled down to �draw the last drop of fact from it, and had not let go till he had.� No one else had treated Granice in that way—even Allonby�s detective had not taken a single note. And though a week had elapsed since the visit of that authorized official, nothing had been heard from the District Attorney�s office: Allonby had apparently dropped the matter again. But McCarren wasn�t going to drop it—not he! He positively hung on Granice�s footsteps. They had spent the greater part of the previous day together, and now they were off again, running down clues.
But at Leffler�s they got none, after all. Leffler�s was no longer a stable. It was condemned to demolition, and in the respite between sentence and execution it had become a vague place of storage, a hospital for broken-down carriages and carts, presided over by a blear-eyed old woman who knew nothing of Flood�s garage across the way—did not even remember what had stood there before the new flat-house began to rise.
�Well—we may run Leffler down somewhere; I�ve seen harder jobs done,� said McCarren, cheerfully noting down the name.