“It’s all true that he said,” she confirmed. “I could hear his racket in the front room and Mr. Ransom working in the back and then, after the old man was gone, Mr. Ransom sweeping up something by himself.”
“Sweeping? What—er—was he—er—sweeping?”
“Glass, I think. The girl used to find little slivers of it first in one part of the room, then in another. I raised the rent for that and for the racket.”
“The next thing,” said Average Jones, “is to find out where that big easy chair went from here. Can you help me there?”
The old lady shook her head. “All I can do is to tell you the near-by truck men.”
Canvass of the local trucking industry brought to light the conveyor of that elegant article of furniture. It had gone, Average Jones learned, not to the mansion of the Honorable William Linder, as he had fondly hoped, but to an obscure address not far from the Navy Yard in Brooklyn. To this address, having looked up and gathered in the B-flat trombonist, Average Jones led the way. The pair lurked in the neighborhood of the ramshackle house watching the entrance, until toward evening, as the door opened to let out a tremulous wreck of a man, palsied with debauch, Schlichting observed:
“That iss him. He hass been drinking again once.”
Average Jones hurried the musician around the corner into concealment. “You have been here before to meet Mr. Ransom?”
“No.”
“Where did he meet you to pay you your wages?”