Haney only stared.
CHAPTER XIII
MR. CZENKI APPEARS
Half an hour later Mr. Birnes, Chief Arkwright and Detective Sergeant
Connelly were on a train, bound for Coaldale. Mr. Birnes had left
them for a moment at the ferry and rushed into a telephone booth.
When he came out he was exuberantly triumphant.
"It's my man, all right," he assured the chief. "He has been missing since Friday night, and no one knows his whereabouts. It's my man."
It was an hour's ride to Coaldale, a sprawling, straggly village with only four or five houses in sight from the station. When the three men left the train there, Mr. Birnes walked over and spoke to the agent, a thin, cadaverous, tobacco-chewing specimen of his species.
"We are looking for an old gentleman who lives out here somewhere," he explained. "He probably lives alone, and we've been told that he has a little cottage somewhere over this way."
He waved his hand vaguely to the right, in accordance with the directions of Red Haney. The station agent scratched his stubbly chin, and spat with great accuracy through a knot-hole ten feet away.
"'Spect you mean old man Kellner," he replied obligingly. "He lives by hisself part of the time; then again sometimes his grand-darter lives with him."
Granddaughter! Mr. Birnes almost jumped.