CHAPTER XIX
The man called Teneyke had decided to give his confidence to Cottar. He had reached the limit of his detective powers and needed aid. All research in the way of telephone books and directories of the region round about Meadow Brook had failed to bring forth any one whose name fitted the letters of the paper which he treasured carefully, wrapped in clean tissue paper and further enshrined in a dirty envelope, in his inside pocket.
He sought Cottar early in the evening in his own home, a dull little clapboard house with a side gate and a brick walk. The front door was always locked and one entered by the kitchen door at the side into a room lighted by a kerosene lamp on a little high shelf, and misty with the smoke of Cottar’s pipe. Cottar’s old wife was deaf as a post, and went pottering round with a little shoulder shawl across her neck and took no notice of anybody. When Teneyke came in Cottar signed to her and she lit a candle and went up a shallow stairway into the wall. One could hear her shuffling tread overhead. The two men waited till the boards overhead stopped creaking. Then Cottar lifted his bushy eyebrows, and let his beady, wise little eyes peer out speculatively.
“Wal, Tyke?”
“All safe?”
“All safe.”
Tyke got out the paper and unwrapped it. Cottar put on his spectacles. Together they silently studied the writing. “oyce Radw.” It seemed to mean nothing to Cottar at first. But Tyke produced a page filched from a public telephone book. There were three R’s that might have been possible, Radwan, Radwanski, and Radwell. The shrewd Cottar decided that the first two were too foreign. The handwriting looked plain and well formed, not as he thought a foreigner would write. Radwell might be the name. He could think of no other. The first name they decided must be Boyce, although that was a boy’s name and not a girl’s, and would, if correct, throw them off the track altogether. Perhaps it was a middle name. So they speculated.
Cottar made a careful, painstaking copy of the writing and folded it away in his grimy pocket for further use.
“Well, I don’t figger it out yet, but there’s ways. If she’s a Meadow Brook dame we’ll find her out. Just keep yer mouth shet an’ yer eyes open an’ most things comes out. Gimme time.”
Came a tap on the door, and Bill entered: