When I arrived at the house where Mrs. Morris lived, it was to learn that she had moved away early that morning.
Where to, nobody knew.
Balked in this direction, I turned my steps toward the house of the deputy sheriff, in a cell beneath whose house, it will be remembered, I had in confinement Dick Stanton, the false detective.
No sooner did the treacherous detective see me than he began whining like a whipped cur, and begged like a dog to be let go, or be dealt with mercifully.
If I would only release him, he said, he would "give away" his pals of the sugar-house, besides putting into my hands numbers of clews in connection with various crimes.
"And they won't be false scents," he said earnestly. "I'll deal square with you, Howard, I swear I will. It will get promotion for you, sure, if you bag the game I can put you on the track of."
I had, however, paid him a visit for a particular purpose, and evading all his questions and turning a deaf ear to his entreaties, I told him I wanted to know if the prisoner who had been confined in the black hole was male or female.
He looked at me in surprise.
"Male or female?" he said.
"Yes."