“It won’t be necessary. I am familiar with every room in the house. Many a time I have stopped here in other days. If you will tell me which room I am to occupy, I will go up to it.”
“The second room in the back part of the attic on the left of the stairway is the one. You will find a lamp on a table in the hall on the second floor.”
“All right.”
The old man left the room, while the bartender gazed after him with curiosity. He climbed the stairway and reached the second floor, where he found the lamp, and then proceeded upstairs to the attic room.
An hour after he retired, the house was silent, all the midnight revelers having gone home, and the bartender having closed up the saloon.
New Year’s Day dawned bright and clear.
The proprietor of the Red Dragon Inn opened the barroom, and at nine o’clock the bartender came downstairs.
For a time the two men stood talking.
There were no customers in the place.
At last the bartender asked the proprietor if he had seen anything of the strange old man who had come in after midnight.