The hardest part of their task lay before them. What would be the outcome?
CHAPTER XXIII
DISCOVERED
Tom had remarked to Sam, when discussing the matter of trying to discover what was going on between Captain Hawkesbury and Mr. Doolittle, that there were at that time only two hotels in Garrison where it was likely the meeting would take place. One hostelry was not far from the dock at which the two cadets landed, and they stopped at this one first.
“Better take a look around,” suggested Sam, as they approached the hotel. “The captain might be in the corridor, or outside somewhere, on the lookout for us.”
“I don’t think he suspects anything,” Tom said, “but, at the same time, it is well to be on the watch.”
Accordingly they looked carefully up and down the street. There was no sign of the old army officer.
Tom and Sam also glanced cautiously about the corridor as they approached the hotel desk. Just what their plans would be, in case they found Mr. Doolittle stopping there, neither could say. As Tom had remarked, they might be forced to invent something on the spur of the moment.
“Mr. Doolittle, no, he isn’t stopping here,” the clerk said, as he nodded to the cadets. He knew where they were from, of course. A single look at their erect carriage and their alert, soldierly manner, told that.
“Then he must be over at the other place,” said Tom. He knew the clerk would have no reason for deceiving him, but of course Mr. Doolittle might have requested that his name be kept off the register—at least for a time.
Tom thought of this.