“One time there was. I think he was Aunty’s brother, only he didn’t make out he was my uncle. I heard them talkin’ an’ they writ a letter together. That was in the hotel after we saw the fire a burnin’. She called him Bill an’ she told him not to let ol’ C. lay eyes on him an’ he said he had some sense left. An’ then he went off with the letter an’ I ain’t never seen him since an’ I ain’t sorry neither, cause he was a turrible lookin’ man an’ I don’t see what ol’ C. would want to lay eyes on him for.”
Philip then put his head in Josie’s lap and slept peacefully until the porter gave warning that Louisville was the next stop.
CHAPTER XX
MISS FITCHET IS SURPRISED
If after Josie left the Hotel Haddon with little Philip she had again ensconced herself in the ladies’ parlor of the Alpha, at the window overlooking the street, instead of hurrying off as she did to the station, she would have seen an interesting drama enacted. About fifteen minutes after Cheatham and his companion left the hotel a rough-looking man in a tweed suit and battered derby came slinking along the street. He stopped in front of the hotel and looked furtively around and then, evidently seeing nothing disconcerting, he darted within. He, too, avoided the desk and also saved the elevator boy the trouble of taking him upstairs. He almost ran down the hall and turned the knob of Number 220. The door opened to him as it had to Josie.
“Humph! Where’s that blasted kid?” he muttered. “Hi! You kid, where yuh hiding? You better come on out from under the bed. I ain’t one to be easy on bad boys.” His tone was rough and commanding. Receiving no answer, he jerked open the closet door and looked under the bed. He even pulled out the drawers of the bureau, poked behind the radiator, and then turned up the mattress, as though he expected someone to be hid under it.
“She sure said 220,” he muttered, and drew from his pocket a note written on Hotel Haddon paper. He read:
“Dear Bill: Old C. will be here at three. I will take him out walking and will leave the door unlocked. Get the brat and make for L. on the night boat. Sis.”
“Something’s gone wrong,” he growled, “but she needn’t think she can double-cross me. She took the kid with her more’n likely and left me in a hole.” The man’s expression was brutal and lowering. Without stopping to straighten the room, which he had succeeded in making look as though a cyclone had struck it, he walked down the stairs and out of the hotel. He then lounged across the street and, taking his stand near the Hotel Alpha, he awaited the return of Cheatham and Miss Fitchet.
They were gone about an hour and then they came, walking very leisurely, still talking animatedly but not so amicably as when they had started on their ramble.