“Just the same,” Neale objected, “he wants to keep away from the house and not frighten folks at night.”
“Oh, we will soon stop that,” said Mr. Howbridge’s representative. “I will report it to the police.”
“But perhaps he does not mean any harm,” faltered Agnes.
“I do not think he does,” said the man. “Nevertheless, we will warn him.”
This promise relieved Agnes a good deal. She was tender-hearted and she did not wish the junkman arrested. But when evening came and he once more stared in at the windows, and tapped on the panes, and wandered around and around the house—
“Well, this is too much!” cried the girl, when Neale and Mrs. McCall both ran out to try to apprehend the marauder. “I do wish we had a telephone. I am going to beg Ruth to have one put in just as soon as she comes back. We could call the police and they would catch that man.”
Perhaps the police, had they been informed, might have caught Costello. But Mrs. McCall and Neale did not. The latter remained until the family went to bed and then the boy did a little lurking in the bushes on his own account. But he did not spy the strange man again.
In the morning, without saying anything to the Kenway family about it, Neale O’Neil set out to find Costello, the junkman. He certainly was not afraid of the man by daylight. He had had experience with him.
From Mr. Howbridge’s clerk he had already obtained the address the junkman had given when he was at the office. The place was down by the canal in the poorer section of the town, of course.
There were several cellars and first-floors of old houses given up to ragpickers and dealers in junk of all kinds. After some inquiry among a people who quite evidently were used to dodging the answering of incriminating questions, Neale learned that there had been a junkman living in a certain room up to within a day or two before, whose name was Costello. But he had disappeared. Oh, yes! Neale’s informant was quite sure that Costello had gone away for good.