"Then what in hell—?"
"Wait! I had to throw a little scare into you so you'd understand what
I'm getting at. Suppose one of your girls lay dead and unidentified
in the morgue of a strange city and was about to be buried in the
Potter's Field. You'd want to know about it, wouldn't you?"
"Are ye daft? Or has something really happened? If not, it's a damn fool question. What d'ye want?"
"Listen! You'd want her to have a decent burial, and you'd want her mother to know how she came to such a pass, wouldn't you?"
The Irishman mopped his brow uncertainly. "I would that."
"Then listen some more." Paul told the man his story, freely, earnestly, but rapidly; he painted the picture of a shy, lonely girl, homeless, hopeless and despondent in a great city, then the picture of two old people waiting in some distant farmhouse, sick at heart and uncertain, seeing their daughter's face in the firelight, hearing her sigh in the night wind. He talked in homely words that left the baggage-man's face grave, then he told how Burns, in a cruel jest, had sent a starving boy out to solve the mystery that had baffled the best detectives. When he had finished his listener cried:
"Shure it was a rotten trick, but why d'ye come here?"
"I want you to go through your baggage-room with me till we find a trunk which this key will fit."
"Come on with ye. I'm blamed if I don't admire yer nerve. Of course ye understand I've no right to let ye in—that's up to the station-master, but he's a grouchy divil." The speaker led Paul into a room piled high with trunks, then summoned two helpers. "We'll move every dam' wan of them till we fit your little key," he declared; then the four men fell to.
A blind search promised to be a job of hours, so Paul walked down the runway between the piles of trunks, using his eyes as he went. At least he could eliminate certain classes of baggage, and thus he might shorten the search; but half-way down the row he called sharply to the smashers: