The Lost House | Page 5

that
hotel, it was probably equally untrue that she had friends in America."
"But," retorted his friend, "you didn't forget to cable the State
Department that you all went in your evening clothes to bow to the new
King? You didn't neglect to cable that, did you?"
"The State Department," returned the Secretary, with withering reproof,
"does not expect us to crawl over the roofs of houses and spy down
chimneys to see if by any chance an American citizen is being
murdered."
"Well," exclaimed Ford, leaping to his feet and placing his notes in his
pocket, "fortunately, my paper expects me to do just that, and if it didn't,
I'd do it anyway. And that is exactly what I am going to do now! Don't
tell the others in the Embassy, and, for Heaven's sake, don't tell the
police. Jimmy, get me a taxi. And you," he commanded, pointing at the
one who had brought the note, are coming with me to Sowell Street, to
show me where you picked up that paper."
On the way to Sowell Street Ford stopped at a newspaper agency, and
paid for the insertion that afternoon of the same advertisement in three
newspapers. It read: "If hansom-cab driver who last week carried note,
found in street, to American Embassy will mail his address to X. X. X.,

care of GLOBE, he will be rewarded."
From the nearest post-office he sent to his paper the following cable:
"Query our local correspondent, Dalesville, Kentucky, concerning
Dosia Pearsall Dale. Is she of sound mind, is she heiress. Who controls
her money, what her business relations with her uncle Charles Ralph
Pearsall, what her present address. If any questions, say inquiries come
from solicitors of Englishman who wants to marry her. Rush answer.
Sowell Street is a dark, dirty little thoroughfare, running for only one
block, parallel to Harley Street. Like it, it is decorated with the brass
plates of physicians and the red lamps of surgeons, but, just as the
medical men in Harley Street, in keeping with that thoroughfare, are
broad, open, and with nothing to conceal, so those of Sowell Street, like
their hiding-place, shrink from observation, and their lives are as
sombre, secret, and dark as the street itself.
Within two turns of it Ford dismissed the taxicab. Giving the soiled
person a half-smoked cigarette, he told him to walk through Sowell
Street, and when he reached the place where he had picked up the paper,
to drop the cigarette as near that spot as possible. He then was to turn
into Weymouth Street and wait until Ford joined him. At a distance of
fifty feet Ford followed the man, and saw him, when in the middle of
the block, without apparent hesitation, drop the cigarette. The house in
front of which it fell was marked, like many others, by the brass plate
of a doctor. As Ford passed it he hit the cigarette with his walking-stick,
and drove it into an area. When he overtook the man, Ford handed him
another cigarette. "To make sure," he said, C4 go back and " drop this
in the place you found the paper. For a moment the man hesitated.
"I might as well tell you," Ford continued, "that I knocked that last
cigarette so far from where you dropped it that you won't be able to use
it as a guide. So, if you don't really know where you found the paper,
you'll save my time by saying so." Instead of being confused by the test,
the man was amused by it. He laughed appreciatively admitted.
"You've caught me out fair, governor," "I Want the 'arf-crown, and I
dropped the cigarette as near the place as I could. But I can't do it again.
It was this way," he explained. "I wasn't taking notice of the houses. I
was walking along looking into the gutter for stumps. I see this paper
wrapped about something round. 'It's a copper,' I thinks, 'jucked out of a
winder to a organ-grinder.' I snatches it, and runs. I didn't take no time

to look at the houses. But it wasn't so far from where I showed you;
about the middle house in the street and on the left 'and side."
Ford had never considered the man as a serious element in the problem.
He believed him to know as little of the matter as he professed to know.
But it was essential he should keep that little to himself.
"No one will pay you for talking," Ford pointed out, "and I'll pay you to
keep quiet. So, if you say nothing concerning that note, at the end of
two weeks, I'll leave two pounds for you with James, at the Embassy."
The man, who believed Ford to be an agent