The man evidently appreciated the migratory habits of the poor too well to dream of prosecuting further inquiries among the neighbors. He strolled about, reading the names over the small shops, the corner public house, the dressmakers' semiprivate residences.
At last he paused before a somewhat grim establishment, an undertaker's office. He entered. A youth was whistling the latest music hall song.
"Do you know anything of a Mrs. Mason, who used to live in this locality about ten years ago?" he asked.
"Mrs. Mason? There may be forty Mrs. Masons. What was her Christian name an' address?"
"Mrs. Hannah Mason, 14 Frederick Street."
The youth skillfully tilted back his stool until he reached a ledger from a shelf behind him. He ran his eye down an index, found a number, and pulled out another book.
"We buried her on the twentieth of November, nine years since," he said, coolly, rattling both tomes back into their places.
"You did, eh? Is there anybody here who remembers her?"
Something in the husky voice of this stark, ill-favored man caused the boy to become less pert.
"Father's in," he said. "I'll ring for him."