CHAPTER XXIII.
PARTNER-DETECTIVES
It was five-thirty when the partner-detectives left the quiet park, where long shadows were lying on the grass and where birds were calling softly from one rustling tree to another.
“It seems like a different world, doesn’t it?” Bobs said, as she smiled in her friendliest way at the lad at the wheel. She had felt a real tenderness for her companion since he had told her about Desmond, and she was glad that an old friend of hers had been a comfort to him.
“It does, indeed,” he declared with a last glance back at the park. “I like trees better than I do many people. We have some wonderful old elms around our summer home in the Orange Hills. When my mother returns I shall ask her to invite you four girls to one of her week-ends, or to one that she will plan just for me, after Dick comes.”
Then, as they were again on the thronged East Side, the lad said:
“Seventy-sixth Street, beyond Second, you said, didn’t you?”
“Yes. There is the Boys’ Club House just ahead,” Roberta exclaimed. Then as they drew up at the curb, she added: “Good! The door is open and so Mr. Hardinian probably is here.”
The young man whom they sought was still there, and as they entered the low wooden temporary structure which covered a vacant lot between two rickety old tenements, they saw him smiling down at a group of excited newsies, who were evidently relating to him some occurrence of their day.
He at once recognized Roberta and made his way toward her, while the boys to whom he had spoken a few words of dismissal departed through a side door, leaving the big room empty.
Bobs held out her hand as she said: “Mr. Hardinian, this is my friend, Mr. Caldwaller-Cory, and we have come, I do believe, on a wild goose chase.”