Several times he hired a small motorboat and went for a cruise, for he loved the water. Nor were these excursions without an object, for he made inquiries along the water front, and of all sorts of lake characters, as to whether they had seen anything of a suspicious looking man or men with a frightened Italian boy. But none had.
“Well, I’m not making much progress,” thought Larry one evening, after a day of hard work and fruitless inquiry. “But better luck to-morrow.” And, strangely enough, his luck did turn.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE DESERTED ROOM
“Well, this looks like a street that would have lots of factory chimneys on it,” said Larry the next morning, as he stood at the head of a busy thoroughfare. “Tenement houses, too. Lots of ’em, and, very likely, furnished rooms and boarding places. This is the most promising place I’ve struck yet.”
In accordance with a sort of plan he had formed, Larry first located the largest cluster of tall chimneys. Then he picked out a tenement house, and went at once to the rear of it, where he knew there would be outside stairways, as is always the case.
“I want a view from there,” he said.
No one interfered with him, or spoke to him, as he made his way through the hall. Children swarmed about, as they always do in these places. The advent of strangers into a tenement house was too common to excite observation. For were not inspectors of one sort or another always coming in, or rent collectors, or the man who collected installments on the furniture?
So, instead of bringing out a curious crowd, the entrance of a stranger into a tenement of the common kind was more apt to send the dwellers into their rooms, behind locked doors. For it is often convenient to pretend to be out when the rent collector, or installment man, calls.
But Larry cared little for what the people did. He wanted to get a view from the rear of this tenement. Then, if it was at all promising, he could begin to make inquiries.