"I was thinking of references, you know. You have friends in New York, then?"
"Yes, I have two. But I doubt if you would regard them as serviceable for references. The best of them is only a policeman; the other is a yeggman by trade—his brother, by the way."
She was silent a moment, wondering if he were telling the truth, and deciding what to say next. The young man used the silence to bolt his coffee at a gulp and go hurriedly but deeply into the preserves.
"My aunt will be glad that you can make a remittance to-night. I will take it to her for you with pleasure."
"Oh!—All right."
He put his hand into his outer breast-pocket, pulled out an envelope, and absently pitched it across the table. She looked at it and saw that it was postmarked the city and bore a typewritten address.
"Am I to open this?"
"Oh, as you like," said he, and, removing the spoon, turned a page.
The agent picked up the envelope with anticipations of helpful clues. It was her business to find out everything that she could about Mr. Queed. A determinedly moneyless, friendless, and vocationless young man could not daily stretch his limbs under her aunt's table and retain the Third Hall Back against more compensatory guests. But the letter proved a grievous disappointment to her. Inside was a folded sheet of cheap white paper, apparently torn from a pad. Inside the sheet was a new twenty-dollar bill. That was all. Apart from the address, there was no writing anywhere.
Yet the crisp greenback, incognito though it came, indubitably suggested that Mr. Queed was not an entire stranger to the science of money-making.