“What’s it?” asked Perry impatiently.
“It’s Cosgrove’s he’s after. Don’t you see?” Cosgrove’s was the principal jewelry store in Clearfield. “That’s why he rented a room in that block, Perry. All he’s got to do is to go out the back way to the alley and there he is!”
“You’re crazy,” laughed Perry. “You don’t know that the man’s a—a criminal, do you?”
“Well, it looks mighty like it,” asserted Fudge, shaking his head in a very satisfied way. “Everything points to it. We’ll have a look at the alley first, I guess.”
The entrance was only a half-block distant and Perry followed his enthusiastic friend up its narrow length until it stopped at a board fence beyond which was the back yard of the next house to the Hulls’. On the way Fudge paid much attention to the three barred windows of Cosgrove’s store.
“See if you see signs of a file,” he whispered to Perry. “That’s what he’d probably do; come down here at night and file the bars away. Maybe we’d better go into the store and see where the safe is located.”
“If you don’t stop tugging at those bars we’ll get pinched,” objected Perry. He was losing his interest in the affair and had begun to think Fudge’s sleuthing rather tiresome. Besides, it was getting sort of dark in the little alley and he had already collided painfully with an ash-barrel. He was relieved when Fudge finally satisfied himself that so far, at least, the bars of the jewelry store windows had not been tampered with. Fudge was evidently disappointed and not a little surprised. He did a good deal of muttering as he went on to the end of the alley. There he stared across the fence.
“Whose house is that?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Judge Folwell’s. No one lives in it now, though.”
“Hm,” said Fudge. “Your house is over there, isn’t it?”