The keeper of the saloon soon returned. 'I can do without him,' he said, when Murdoch told him that he wanted the negro to do a job for him. 'I don't expect it will be a very busy night, and if it is I will call my wife down, and put her behind the bar, while I keep things straightened out.'
Upon arriving at the hotel Captain Hampton dined quietly. Then he went to the clerk's desk, had a talk with him over the people who had been staying there and showed him Dorothy's photograph.
'Nothing like that been here,' the clerk said positively. 'I should have noticed her at once if she had been.'
'I have no reason to suppose that she came here more than to any other hotel,' Hampton said. 'I will go round in the morning and try the others. I suppose there are not a great many where a gentleman with a lady with him would be likely to put up?'
'Not more than six, I should say, at the outside,' the clerk said, and gave the names, which Captain Hampton at once wrote down in a note-book.
'It is just possible that they might not have come here at all, but may have stopped at Mobile, where the steamer touched on her way down; still, I think it much more likely that they have come here.' Then he went upstairs and wrote a chatty letter to Danvers, giving him an account of the voyage.
'I hear there is a steamer leaves to-morrow, and I hope to be able to give you some news before I close this. I am going round the hotels the first thing, and hope, if not to find them, to get some news of them. The latter is most probable. I don't see Truscott could have any motive in stopping here, and I shall expect to find that they only stayed a day or two and then went up the river. I have a strong conviction he means to go to California; but even in that case he may have chosen some other route—have gone down to Panama and crossed the isthmus there, or may have taken steamer to Galveston and started from there by the southern route, though I don't think that is likely, for the Indians are worse on that line than on the other. Anyhow, whichever route they have taken I shall follow. I wrote from New York to the War Office, asking that my leave might be extended for another six months from the end of the year, on very urgent business that compelled me to travel in America. I have sent a private letter to Colonel Eversfield, telling him something of the nature of the work I have in hand, and asking him to back up my request. I have no doubt he can manage it. That ought to give me plenty of time; but if the worst comes to the worst and I find myself pinched I must take ship at San Francisco and get to China, and from there by a P. and O. to India. This will be the last letter you will get, I fancy, for a very long time; though for aught I know there may be means of sending off letters from some of the stations on the plains.'
He addressed an envelope, laid it by the unfinished letter, and then went downstairs. It was dark now, and beckoning to Jacob, who was sitting in the hall, to accompany him, he strolled out through the door. For nearly an hour they wandered about, and at the end of that time came out on the quays.