“I’m blessed if I know,” and Peter scratched his head in perplexity.
“Well, if I called myself a newspaper reporter I’d get a story once in a while!” exclaimed the city editor, in disgust. “Otherwise you might as well go back to the real estate business,” for Peter had tried that, after having been a reporter for a while, but the call of the ink and the presses had been too much for him, and he had gone back to his desk and typewriter. “Get a story!” exclaimed the editor.
“I’ll try,” promised Peter, but he did not have much hope of success.
In the meanwhile Larry “put the screws” on Parloti. He kept after him closer than ever, and besides Nyler, several other detectives “shadowed” him more closely than before. Parloti’s life was made miserable.
It became known that he was a sort of gentleman adventurer, with no particular trade or calling, living on his wits, principally, and on a small income from property in Italy. He was well educated, and spoke English almost perfectly. He had been decorated several times, and, had he chosen to live a more usual sort of life, might have done well. But he was too much a soldier of fortune to do this.
Larry worked night and day seeking for clews, not only for the missing boy, but for some trace of the person who had written him the threatening letter. On the latter, however, he failed. Larry interviewed the janitor of the apartment house where he and his mother lived, but the man had seen nothing of the messenger who had left the note, and had so silently disappeared afterward.
“He must have come in with a false key,” the janitor said, “for the door is kept locked at night.”
“Whoever it was went to a lot of trouble,” remarked the young reporter, “for he could just as well have mailed me the letter to my home, or at the office, and I wouldn’t have had so much chance of finding out where it came from as though he left it. He took a chance on being caught.”
“But he wasn’t,” said the janitor.
“No, worse luck, he wasn’t,” agreed Larry grimly.