"The latter part of that sentence may probably be true: I have my doubts about the other!" thought Tom Leslie, though he waited a more prudent occasion for communicating the thought to Harding.
"And so, Mr. Superintendent, you consider all this of no consequence?" said Harding, going back to first principles, and not by any means improving in the matter of temper.
"I did not say anything of the kind!" answered the Superintendent, his face sterner but his voice even as before. "I said there was nothing upon which I could act, and the police force of the district is scarcely sufficient to set a watch around all the houses that may happen to have traitors in them. I would advise you to say nothing of this affair to any other persons, if you have not yet done so; and if you see or hear of anything more that will seem to justify an arrest, communicate with this office again."
He did not say "good morning!" as a sign of dismissal, but his manner indicated as much, and the two friends left him with merely an additional nod. Harding was in decided dudgeon as the policeman of the bright blue cloth and the unimpeachable buttons accompanied them to the door, and muttered something very like "I'm d—d if I do communicate with that office again, in a hurry!" Leslie, who had seen more of police operations, both abroad and at home, than his friend, and who had expected little or nothing else from the first,—kept his good humor admirably; and he bored Harding, before they had walked from the office to Broadway, with the information that that was about all the thanks any man ever received for attempting to do a service to government or individuals, and a relation of how at Naples a couple of years before, he had attempted to save the life of an Englishman threatened with assassination, and been arrested and very nearly imprisoned for an attempt to stab the man himself, with his penknife or tooth-pick—he never knew precisely which!
The two friends were scarcely in the street, when the Superintendent called sharply:
"Mr. Carpenter!"
The Deputy was in the room in a moment. The Superintendent was writing a few words on a piece of paper.
"You heard the story those men were telling?"
"A part of it—perhaps all," answered the Deputy.
"There may be something in it—I think there is," continued the Superintendent. "At all events, put those two houses"—handing him the slip of paper—"under close watch, and discover who enters and who leaves them, and at what hours. Put B—— and another good man in charge of the Prince Street house, and L—— and another good man at the one in East 5— Street. That is all."