"Half past eight! I can't hang around till then. Still, I suppose I'll have time to get supper and come down afterward, won't I?"
"I should think so," Hamersley returned, with an affectation of indifference he was far from feeling.
"I'll do it," the stranger said decidedly, thrusting the letter into his pocket. "Half past eight, you say? Much obliged for the information."
With a quick nod, which Jock returned, he started briskly up the avenue, leaving the Yale man staring, helplessly after him in a perfect agony of indecision. He wanted to follow the fellow, and yet he realized how utterly futile such a thing would be. The man would be wise to the game before he had gone a block, and that would probably spoil everything.
What should he do? What could he do? The man was rapidly getting away from him, and Hamersley fairly danced on the pavement as he tried frantically to think.
It was at this moment that he caught sight of "Shrimp" Bradley briskly crossing the avenue.
CHAPTER XL.
THE OPEN DOOR.
As his cognomen indicated, Bradley was short and slim and boyish-looking. He had fresh, rosy cheeks and innocent, bland blue eyes, which reminded one vaguely of cherubs and better worlds than this. In reality he was as sophisticated a little chap as had ever made the lives of New Haven professors miserable; and he had a command of language which, during his two years of "coxing" on the varsity shell, had caused the hair of even those hardened athletes to stand on end. To the harassed Hamersley his appearance at that particular moment seemed like a direct dispensation of Providence.
"Shrimp!" he spluttered, clutching the diminutive chap by the shoulders, "there's a fellow going up the avenue there—short, slim, dark clothes and brown felt hat. He's a detective, after Barry Lawrence. I've got to know where he goes. For the love of Mike, follow him and tell me where he lands! I'll be at the club. Be quick, now, or you'll miss him!"