“Where?”

“Drinking coffee at a table in th’ coort. He wint out, havin’ paid the man, not a-signin’, an’ he guv the waiter enough to make him say, ‘Thank ye, sor,’ but not enough to make him smile and stay round to pull aff the chair. I follied him to the dure, but he got into an autymobile—”

“Get the number?”

“Yis, sor. Number—here ’tis, sor, I wrote it down to make sure.” He passed over to the colonel an old envelope on which was written a number. [A]“M. 20139,” read the colonel, carefully noting down the number in his own memorandum-book. And he reflected, “That is a Massachusetts number—humph!”

Haley’s information ended there. He heard of[93] Archie’s disappearance with his usual stolid mien, but his hands slowly clenched. The colonel continued:

[93]

“You are to find out, if you can, by scraping acquaintance with the carriage men, if that auto—you have written a description, I see, as well as the number—find out if that auto left this hotel this afternoon between six and seven o’clock. Find out who were in it. Find out where it is kept and who owns it. Get H. Birdsall, Merchants’ Exchange Building, to send a man to help you. Wait, I’ve a card ready for you to give him from me; he has sent me men before. Report by telephone as soon as you know anything. If I’m not here, speak Spanish and have them write it down. Be back here to-night by ten, if you can, yourself.”

Haley dismissed, and his own appetite for dinner effectually dispelled by his report, Winter joined his aunt. Should he tell her his suspicions and their ground? Wasn’t he morally obliged, now, to tell her? She was co-guardian with him of the boy, who, he had no doubt, had been spirited away by Mercer and his accomplice; and hadn’t she a right to any information on the matter in his possession?

[94]Reluctantly he admitted that she did have such a right; and, he admitted further, being a man who never cheated at solitaire, that his object in keeping the talk of the two men from her had not been so much the desire to guard her nerves (which he knew perfectly well were of a robuster fiber than those of most women twenty or forty years younger than she); no, he admitted it grimly, he had not so much spared his aunt as Janet Smith; he could not bear to direct suspicion toward her. But how could he keep silent longer? Kicking this question about in his mind, he spoiled the flavor of his after-dinner cigar, although 

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