The cold, early light of a clouded morning found McCarty and Dennis seated over pancakes and coffee in an all-night restaurant on Sixth Avenue not far from Fiftieth Street. The intervening hours since they left the New Queen’s Mall had been fruitlessly spent in a weary round of the ferries and railroad terminals in search of news of a small, solitary traveler and now they had just come from an interview with the superintendent of the palatial studio apartment building in which the artist Blaisdell resided, whose exact address a nearby druggist had been fortuitously able to supply.
“I always thought those painter guys lived in garrets with never a square meal nor a second shirt,” Dennis spoke in a slightly dazed tone. “I mind that day watchman Bill said young Horace told him Blaisdell was one of the greatest in the country, but he must have some regular business to be able to live in a place like that! There’s one thing sure; no matter how much of a fancy he’d took to the kid he could afford to get into no trouble by taking him on a tour without his father and mother being willing, and if the boy showed up he’d bring him back. Where is it again that he’s gone sketching?”
“Up in the She-wan-gunk Mountains,” McCarty pronounced the name with painstaking care. “Ellenville is his headquarters, the superintendent said, if you remember; the Detweiler House. Granting there was a train, and the lad had more money with him than that four-eyed tutor suspected, he could have got there by early evening, but no word of any kind had come when I ’phoned the Goddard house an hour ago.”
“I know,” Dennis drained his cup and held it out to the sleepy waiter to be refilled. “’Tis too bad you did not tell Trafford about finding the watch.”
“And send him into hysterics? He’s as bad as a woman now!” McCarty shrugged. “The doctor give orders Mrs. Goddard wasn’t to be woke up till eight but we’ll chance it by seven. How do you feel, Denny?”
Dennis eyed the questioner with swift suspicion.
“There’s nothing the matter with me that I know of!”
“’Tis a pity!” McCarty commented callously. “I was thinking if you called up the lieutenant at the engine house and told him how sick you were he’d maybe let you off duty the day. There’s a ’phone over on the cigar counter.”
“And what’s ailing me?” Dennis’ eyes sparkled but his tone was flat for his inventive faculties were at low ebb in the early morning.
“From what I’ve learned lately, Denny, about mental defectives—!”