I just called on a private matter.
Where did he go to?"
"Hell, man, I didn't even know he was goin'."
"Who did he have with him here--a family?"
"A woman 'bout his age I should say, an' a younger one. I didn't see 'em
only from the window; didn't get no sight o' the girl's face at all, but
could tell the way she walked she was young. They didn't have nothin'
with 'em; that's all my stuff in the house there."
Feeling the uselessness of trying to learn anything more, West thanked
him, and returned to the taxi.
"Back to the Club," he ordered briefly, and settled into his seat to
think.
CHAPTER XIII
238 WRAY STREET
The information thus gained had been small enough, yet sufficient to
stimulate his belief that he was at least upon the right trail. The
sudden departure of this man Hobart, and the fact that no young children
were in the family, were important items to consider. Coolidge then had
not visited this cottage to aid a widow and orphans. There had been some
other object in his call. The girl must have known and understood the
real purpose; that was why they both acquiesced so readily to his
remaining outside in the car. It was part of their mutual plan to thus
leave him in ignorance. Yet they had made a mistake in taking him along
at all. This error alone gave him now an opportunity to unravel the
riddle. But did it? What did he know? Merely that Coolidge had not gone
to this house on an errand of charity; that the occupant called himself,
temporarily, perhaps, Jim Hobart; that his family consisted of two
women, undescribed except as to age; and that all three had mysteriously
disappeared together.
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