he sang in his clear tenor. I paused on the lower floor and listened. He had stopped singing as abruptly as he had begun.
CHAPTER XXII.
AT THE BOARDING-HOUSE
I had not been home for thirty-six hours, since the morning of the preceding day. Johnson was not in sight, and I let myself in quietly with my latchkey. It was almost midnight, and I had hardly settled myself in the library when the bell rang and I was surprised to find Hotchkiss, much out of breath, in the vestibule.
“Why, come in, Mr. Hotchkiss,” I said. “I thought you were going home to go to bed.”
“So I was, so I was.” He dropped into a chair beside my reading lamp and mopped his face. “And here it is almost midnight, and I’m wider awake than ever. I’ve seen Sullivan, Mr. Blakeley.”
“You have!”
“I have,” he said impressively.
“You were following Bronson at eight o’clock. Was that when it happened?”
“Something of the sort. When I left you at the door of the restaurant, I turned and almost ran into a plain clothes man from the central office. I know him pretty well; once or twice he has taken me with him on interesting bits of work. He knows my hobby.”
“You know him, too, probably. It was the man Arnold, the detective whom the state’s attorney has had watching Bronson.”