"Search me!" said Alfred shrugging. "They're in a way about something."
"Anything new?"
"Uh-huh. Hilton says they got another letter from the blackmailers."
Evan being human, could not but feel certain stirrings of curiosity. "Very well, I'll come with you," he said.
They left a furiously unsatisfied Miss Sisson behind them.
Evan and Alfred rode up-town together on the bus. Alfred was no less silky and insinuating than in the beginning, but whereas at first he had been genuinely candid, he now only made believe to be.
"He's been warned off me," thought Evan.
The conversation on Alfred's side consisted of a subtle attempt to elicit from Evan what had happened the day before, and on Evan's side a determination to balk his curiosity without appearing to be aware of what he was after.
The Deaveses, father and son, were in the library. Before he was well inside the room the latter flung out at him:
"Where have you been all morning?"