"How did you learn all this?"
"I found Boomsby's saloon first. About five o'clock the porter of the store next to it began to sweep off the sidewalk. I saw that my uniform took his eye, and he was as polite to me as though I had been an admiral in the United States Navy. I talked with him awhile, asking him questions about the city. Finally I brought the matter of the conversation down to the subject of saloons. I thought there were plenty of them. He told me some of them had a separate bar for colored people, where they sold the cheapest corn whiskey and apple brandy for ten cents a glass, and made nine cents on every glass they sold."
"That's just the business for Captain Boomsby: it is just mean enough for him," I added.
"The porter spoke of the Boomsby saloon as a new one opened a few weeks before. The keeper had a bar for colored customers in a back room, with an entrance from the lane in the rear. When he said this, I began to pump him in regard to Boomsby. I finally asked if the captain took boarders or lodgers. He had one; but this one had had a quarrel with the saloonist's wife, and had left. He did not know his name, or where he went to. He said the cartman that stood at the next corner had carted off his furniture."
"Then you went for the cartman," I suggested.
"I went for him; but I could not find him for some time, and that is what made me so late," continued Washburn. "The porter told me he was hauling baggage from the Charleston steamer, which had just got in, to the Carlton Hotel. His name was Jackman, and it was on his wagon. I found the cartman, but he was so busy I had no chance to speak to him until half past eight. I took my breakfast at the Carlton, which is kept by Maine people. I introduced myself to one of the proprietors; and of course they knew my father. I told him I had been waiting a long time to speak to Jackman. He immediately called him into the office.
"Thus introduced to Jackman, he was willing to tell me all he knew on any subject. He said he had carried the furniture of the lodger to an auction-room, and his trunks and other things to the St. Johns House. The lodger's name was Cobbington; and Jackman thought he was poor."
"He must have been, to take a room at Captain Boomsby's house."
"I asked Jackman what things besides the trunks he had carried to the St. Johns Hotel. He replied that Cobbington had a pet rattlesnake and a box of alligators."
"All this goes to confirm Captain Boomsby's explanation," I added.