The Late Mrs. Null | Page 9

In about half an hour she returned and handed to the boy a
memorandum upon a scrap of paper. "You go out now to your lunch,"
she said, "and while you are out, stop at the St. Winifred Hotel, where
Mr Candy found the name of Junius Keswick, and see if it is not down
again not long after the date which I have put on this slip of paper. I
think if a person went to Niagara Falls he'd be just as likely to make a
little trip of it and come back again as to keep travelling on, which Mr
Candy supposes he did. If you find the name again, put down the date
of arrival on this, and see if there was any memorandum about
forwarding letters."
"All right," said the boy. "But I'll be gone an hour and a half. Can't cut
into my lunch time."
In the course of a few days Lawrence Croft received a note signed
Candy & Co. "per" some illegible initials, which stated that Mr Junius
Keswick had been traced to a boarding-house in the city, but as the
establishment had been broken up for some time, endeavors were now
being made to find the lady who had kept the house, and when this was
done it would most likely be possible to discover from her where Mr
Keswick had gone.
Lawrence waited a few days and then called at the Information Shop.
Again was Mr Candy absent; and so was the boy. The cashier informed
him that she had found--that is, that the lady who kept the
boarding-house had been found--and she thought she remembered the
gentlemen in question, and promised, as soon as she could, to look
through a book, in which she used to keep directions for the forwarding
of letters, and in this way another clew might soon be expected.
"This seems to be going on better," said Lawrence, "but Mr Candy
doesn't show much in the affair. Who is managing it? You?"
The girl blushed and then laughed, a little confusedly. "I am only the
cashier," she said.

"And the laborious duties of your position would, of course, give you
no time for anything else," remarked Lawrence.
"Oh, well," said the girl, "of course it is easy enough for any one to see
that I haven't much to do as cashier, but the boy and Mr Candy are
nearly always out, looking up things, and I have to do other business
besides attending to cash."
"If you are attending to my business," said Lawrence, "I am very glad,
especially now that it has reached the boarding-house stage, where I
think a woman will be better able to work than a man. Are you doing
this entirely independent of Mr Candy?"
"Well, sir," said the cashier, with an honest, straightforward look from
her gray eyes that pleased Lawrence, "I may as well confess that I am.
But there's nothing mean about it. He has all the same as given it up,
for he's waiting to hear from a man at Niagara, who will never write to
him, and probably hasn't any thing to write, and as I advised you to pay
the money I feel bound in honor to see that the business is done, if it
can be done."
"Have you a brother or a husband to help you in these investigations
and searches?" asked Lawrence.
"No," said the cashier with a smile. "Sometimes I send our boy, and as
to boarding houses, I can go to them myself after we shut up here."
"I wish," said Lawrence, "that you were married, and that you had a
husband who would not interfere in this matter at all, but who would go
about with you, and so enable you to follow up your clew thoroughly.
You take up the business in the right spirit, and I believe you would
succeed in finding Mr Keswick, but I don't like the idea of sending you
about by yourself."
"I won't deny," said the cashier, "that since I have begun this affair I
would like very much to carry it out; so, if you don't object, I won't
give it up just yet, and as soon as anything happens I'll let you know."

CHAPTER III.
Autumn in Virginia, especially if one is not too near the mountains, is a
season in which greenness sails very close to Christmas, although
generally veering away in time to prevent its verdant hues from
tingeing that happy day with the gloomy influence of the prophetic
proverb about churchyards. Long after the time when the people of the
regions watered by the Hudson and the Merrimac are beginning to
button up their overcoats, and to think of weather strips for their
window-sashes, the dwellers in the land