"He's rather eccentric, sir. He does not want to be bothered with servants."
"And do you think this very strange gentleman will condescend to help me, Jenkins?" I inquired dubiously.
"Oh, yes, indeed, sir, if I ask him."
"Do you really believe that he can find a ray of light amidst the Stygian darkness of this horrible business?" I asked, interested in spite of myself.
"I'm sure of it, sir."
"Very well, then. Get me my hat and give me his address. Anything is better than this deadening inaction."
When he returned with my overcoat and hat, Jenkins handed me a folded note. "If you don't mind, sir," he said apologetically. "Mr. McKelvie doesn't always receive strangers, sir."
Queer customer, I reflected as I departed on my errand and I had my doubts of his ability to aid me, grave doubts which were only increased by the faded gentility of the old house on Stuyvesant Square, and far from quieted by the sight of the darky who popped her head out of the front window at my ring. It was a head calculated to frighten away any but the boldest intruder, a head bristling with wooly gray spikes set like a picket fence around a face the whites of whose eyes gleamed brighter and whose thick lips flamed redder against the shiny blackness of her skin.
"Courageous man to employ such an apparition," was my thought as I proferred my request.
"Mistuh McKelvie?" she repeated after me, parrot-like. "No, suh, he ain't home, no, suh."