The clerk had to consult the time tables before answering this question. It took only a brief while to fish out what he sought.
“It is eighty-four miles by rail with one change of cars at Thurston, where you have to wait twenty minutes. Leaving Albany at eight-thirty, you reach Beelsburg in time for a midday dinner, after which comes a jolt of a dozen miles to Dawson. The doctors tell us that a vigorous shaking up is good for digestion, so when you reach Dawson you ought to be ready for another square meal.”
Harvey could not ask for more explicit directions, and thanking the clerk for his kindness, he went to his room. In the morning he sent a telegram to his father’s office explaining his plans and expressing hope of success. The programme as outlined in the conversation between Harvey and the hotel clerk was followed. Arriving at Beelsburg on time, Harvey ate his noon meal at that station, after which he and two passengers had a tedious wait for the stage which ought to have arrived from Dawson an hour before the train. When at last the lumbering vehicle swung round the corner and drew up at the station platform, the explanation of the delay was prosaic. An axle had broken and the driver had patched it up until he reached the wheelwright shop at the other end of the village, where a longer time was needed to mend the fracture.
Harvey’s fellow-passengers were middle-aged men and neighbors who had much to say to each other. What he overheard was of no interest to him. Once or twice he was on the point of asking questions about Professor Morgan, but they showed no sociability toward him, and a feeling of distrust held him mute upon the one subject that filled his thoughts. He decided that it was prudent to await his arrival in the country town.
Harvey found the dozen-mile ride all that was pictured by the hotel clerk of the Ten Eyck House. For most of the way the gaunt horses walked, except when going down-hill, and in many places it was hard pulling for them. But nothing of note happened, and as it was growing dark, the stage halted in front of the Washington House and Harvey, with traveling bag in hand, sprang out. The others remained in order to ride to their homes farther down the street.
The hotel, with its rather high-sounding title, was a small, modest structure, as was to be expected where the guests were scant and far between. The young aviator had no trouble in obtaining a comfortable room. Had he been accompanied by a dozen friends, they would have been accommodated with the same promptness.
He had decided upon doing as he did in Albany, that is, question the clerk of the hotel, who it might be reasonably supposed would have a wide acquaintance with the affairs of the neighborhood. But a difficulty appeared at the outset: the primitive hotel had no clerk. The landlord, a large, beefy, slow-witted man, who wheezed when he waddled about and seldom spoke unless spoken to, and not always then, managed affairs, and sat at the head of the table during meals. He showed not the slightest interest in his solitary guest, but filled and sent his plate to him by the hands of a tidy young woman who evidently was his daughter.
Since, however, the Boniface seemed to be the only available source of information, Harvey wasted no time. The dining-room being empty of all except the two, he finished his meal first, and walking beside the table to its head, sat down in a chair near the phthisical landlord, who glared at him from under his shaggy brows as if he failed to understand the meaning of the movement.
“If you please,” opened the guest, “I should like to ask you a few questions.”
The host kept on eating, but grunted a response which the young man accepted as permission to proceed.