"It's something of his—the duke's," I said. "Peaches has had it for years."
"Give us a look-see!" asked Dick, stretching out his hand for it. Rather reluctantly she allowed him to take it.
"I bet there's something sewed inside that lining!" he commented after a moment's examination. "Let's open her up!"
"No!" cried Peaches, snatching it back. "If there is it's none of our business. I'll just take care of it, thanks! And now about money—our not having any lets us out of the hotel plan, Dick; and anyhow if we cash a check we can't do it before to-morrow. In order to get into a decent hotel without any bags we'd have to prove who we are, and then pa would spot us first thing in the morning."
"Besides which, if Sandro is really at this Hoboken address, he will very likely be gone by morning," I added; "if indeed he has not already left."
"You said it!" cried Peaches. "Come on, let's go! The Lord only knows when that ex-sheriff of a parent of mine will have a posse on my trail!"
We acted upon this, the combined wisdom of all three of us, and paying our modest indebtedness to the midnight-luncheon establishment, betook ourselves back to the automobile and the pursuit of our quest.
How silent are the busy marts of Manhattan in the small hours of the night! With her pearl-like lamps the only sentinels along our way, we sped into Broadway and thence across the park and down Fifth Avenue almost as rapidly as we had proceeded along the Albany highway from Ossining, turning west at some side street evidently familiar to Richard, the chauffeur, since the days of his debarkation, and sped toward a westbound ferryboat.
It was a great comfort to me to realize that the city of Hoboken itself would not be wholly unfamiliar to him either, inasmuch as he had left for Europe from that port as a soldier, and had again visited it in the same capacity two years later upon his return. Therefore, he could, of course, be relied upon to know something about the place, and just how undesirable he considered the section for which we were headed might be. It did not, however, occur to me to question him on this point until the lights of the opposite shore were drawing near. We had remained seated in the auto, which was driven bodily upon the lower section of the ferryboat.
"Richard," I said, "do you consider the section for which we are bound a residential one?"