CHAPTER XII.
A BIG HAUL.
When I awoke next morning, I was surprised to find my erratic body-servant not in attendance.
Carnes, for convenience, and because of lack of modern hotel accommodations, occupied a cot in my room, which was the largest in the house, and sufficiently airy to serve for two. Usually, he was anything but a model serving man in the matter of rising and attending to duty, for, invariably, I was out of bed an hour before him, and had made my toilet to the music of his nasal organ, long before he broke his morning nap.
This morning, however, Carnes was not snoring peacefully on his cot underneath the open north window, and I arose and made a hasty toilet, feeling sure that something unusual had called him from his bed this early.
Wondering much, I descended to the office, where an animated buzz warned me that something new and startling was under discussion.
Usually at that hour this sanctum was untenanted, save for the youth who served as a combination of porter and clerk, and perhaps a stray boarder or two, but this morning a motley crowd filled the room. Not a noisy, blustering crowd, but a gathering of startled, perplexed, angry looking men, each seeming hopeful of hearing something, rather than desirous of saying much.
Jim Long, the idle, every-where-present Jim, stood near the outer door, looking as stolid and imperturbable as usual, and smoking, as a matter of course.
I made my way to him at once.