He thought rapidly for a few moments.
“Let me see the room where he was held a prisoner,” he requested of the woman.
“For certainly, yes,” she assented. “I show you.”
Taking a key down from a nail on the wall, she led the way to a sort of passage at the end of the hall. It appeared that when the tenement was built a mistake had been made and two rooms, intended to go in with the apartment which the woman rented, had been shut off from the others by a wall. These rooms later were fitted up to accommodate two persons. There were a bedroom and a kitchen, with a small bath attached.
“And it’s here Lorenzo was held a prisoner!” exclaimed Larry, as he entered the deserted room which, the woman said, had been used by the boy. The place was not clean, and it was in disorder. The bed was not made, and there were scraps of food all about.
“Poor little feller!” murmured the sympathetic woman.
“Yes,” agreed Larry. “Oh, if I could only have found him before! But perhaps it’s not too late yet. If I could only find some sort of a clew to where they have gone! But I’m all at sea again.”
He gazed about the room. There was little that seemed to offer any hint as to where the men had taken the stolen boy. The kidnappers would see to that. And yet they might have overlooked something—something that would tell Larry what he wanted to know.
“They must have found out that he dropped the letter from the window,” thought the young reporter. “That probably gave them a scare, and they lit out. Tell me,” he said to the woman, “was one man, who led the boy away, tall and big?” and he described Parloti.
“No; he did not look so,” she replied: “They were both small men.”