“By the way, I forgot to get Pickering’s address from Morgan. If you happen to have it—”
“With pleasure,” I said. “Alexis Building, Broadway, New York.”
“Good! That’s easy to remember,” he said, smiling and turning up his coat collar. “Don’t forget me; I’m quartered in a hermit’s cell back of the chapel, and I believe we can find many matters of interest to talk about.”
“I’m confident of it,” I said, glad of the sympathy and cheer that seemed to emanate from his stalwart figure.
I threw on my overcoat and walked to the gate with him, and saw him hurry toward the village with long strides.
CHAPTER XII
I EXPLORE A PASSAGE
“Bates!”—I found him busy replenishing the candlesticks in the library,—it seemed to me that he was always poking about with an armful of candles,—“there are a good many queer things in this world, but I guess you’re one of the queerest. I don’t mind telling you that there are times when I think you a thoroughly bad lot, and then again I question my judgment and don’t give you credit for being much more than a doddering fool.”
He was standing on a ladder beneath the great crystal chandelier that hung from the center of the ceiling, and looked down upon me with that patient injury that is so appealing in a dog—in, say, the eyes of an Irish setter, when you accidentally step on his tail. That look is heartbreaking in a setter, but, seen in a man, it arouses the direst homicidal feelings of which I am capable.
“Yes, Mr. Glenarm,” he replied humbly.