“If there’s a foot of it we’ve not been over, barring the insides of the other houses—!” began Dennis in obvious disappointment. “I thought we’d be getting after whoever takes care of Blaisdell’s place to find where he’s gone—”
“At this time of night?” snorted McCarty. “Has it come to you that Goddard may not be so far wrong at that, especially if he’s got some reason he hasn’t told for thinking the lad was stolen? I’m beginning to see the practical workings of those books of mine you turn your nose up at and I ask you, did Horace look to have nerve enough to run away? If he went outside these gates it was of his own free will, of course, and during the time Bill left the one of them open, but what if he’d been paid to do it? What if the lad had been decoyed outside? How do we know there’s not others on the block concerned in it?”
“‘Others on the block!’” repeated Dennis, stopping short as they passed the dark Bellamy house. “Mac! You’re not thinking there could be any connection between what happened to Hughes four days ago and the Goddard kid’s disappearance! You’re not looking to have him found dead somewhere, poisoned! Glory be! What’s come to this street all of a sudden?”
“I’m asking myself that,” returned the other grimly. “I’m going no further in my mind, though, just saying it looks funny, that’s all. Here’s a handful of rich families living behind their gates in peace and seclusion for generations, with nothing ever happening except maybe a funeral now and then, for they could not shut out death. Then a murder takes place right in their midst, even if the victim did go far before he dropped in his tracks, and while there’s still no answer to it somebody in the next house disappears.”
“So that’s why you hinted at notoriety, if Goddard took the case to headquarters instead of leaving it to us! We’re still on the Hughes affair after all!” exclaimed Dennis, adding: “What’s down here?”
McCarty had turned down the black passage or court between Mrs. Bellamy’s and the closed Falkingham house next door on the east, and he vouchsafed no response to the companion who followed curiously at his heels until they had reached the rear of the boarded-up residence. Then he whispered cautiously:
“Got your flashlight?”
For answer Dennis produced the pocket electric torch without which he seldom went on a nocturnal adventure with McCarty. The latter took it from him, and, pressing the button, darted a minute but piercing ray of light along the rear of the houses whose front sidewalks they had just traversed.
“See that, Denny?” he whispered. “An open court as clear as the palm of your hand straight past the Bellamys’ and Orbit’s to Goddard’s on the corner. If the kid had wanted to get out without being seen he might have left the back of his house and come along this court to any of the passage-ways that lead out to the sidewalk nearer the gate.”
“True for you,” Dennis assented. “Turn the light along the back wall till we see how high it is, and whether there are any little doors in it or not.”