corner and take a glance down the alley and satisfy himself, don’t you
see?”
“Yes, his idea is plain, now. He seems to be a man that can’t be candid
and straightforward. He acts as if he thought we–shucks, I wish he had
come out like a man and told us what hotel he–”
“Now you’ve struck it! you’ve struck it sure, Washington; he has told
us.”
“Has he?”
“Yes, he has; but he didn’t mean to. That alley is a lonesome little
pocket that runs along one side of the New Gadsby. That’s his hotel.”
“What makes’ you think that?”
“Why, I just know it. He’s got a room that’s just across from that lamp
post. He’s going to sit there perfectly comfortable behind his shutters
at 10.22 to-morrow, and when he sees us sitting on the ash-barrel, he’ll
say to himself, ‘I saw one of those fellows on the train’–and then he’ll
pack his satchel in half a minute and ship for the ends of the earth.”
Hawkins turned sick with disappointment:
“Oh, dear, it’s all up, Colonel–it’s exactly what he’ll do.”
“Indeed he won’t!”
“Won’t he? Why?”
“Because you won’t be holding the ash barrel down, it’ll be me. You’ll
be coming in with an officer and a requisition in plain clothes–the
officer, I mean–the minute you see him arrive and open up a talk with
me.”
“Well, what a head you have got, Colonel Sellers! I never should have
thought of that in the world.”
“Neither would any earl of Rossmore, betwixt William’s contribution and
Mulberry–as earl; but it’s office hours, now, you see, and the earl in
me sleeps. Come–I’ll show you his very room.”
They reached the neighborhood of the New Gadsby about nine in the
evening, and passed down the alley to the lamp post.
“There you are,” said the colonel, triumphantly, with a wave of his hand
which took in the whole side of the hotel. “There it is–what did I tell
you?”
“Well, but–why, Colonel, it’s six stories high. I don’t quite make out
which window you–”
“All the windows, all of them. Let him have his. choice-I’m
indifferent, now that I have located him. You go and stand on the corner
and wait; I’ll prospect tie hotel.”
The earl drifted here and there through the swarming lobby, and finally
took a waiting position in the neighborhood of the elevator. During an
hour crowds went up and crowds came down; and all complete as to limbs;
but at last the watcher got a glimpse of a figure that was satisfactory-
got a glimpse of the back of it, though he had missed his chance at the
face through waning alertness. The glimpse revealed a cowboy hat, and
below it a plaided sack of rather loud pattern, and an empty sleeve
pinned up to the shoulder. Then the elevator snatched the vision aloft
and the watcher fled away in joyful excitement, and rejoined the fellow-
conspirator.
“We’ve got him, Major–got him sure! I’ve seen him–seen him good; and I
don’t care where or when that man approaches me backwards, I’ll recognize
him every time. We’re all right. Now for the requisition.”
They got it, after the delays usual in such cases. By half past eleven
they were at home and happy, and went to bed full of dreams of the
morrow’s great promise.
Among the elevator load which had the suspect for fellow-passenger was a
young kinsman of Mulberry Sellers, but Mulberry was not aware of it and
didn’t see him. It was Viscount Berkeley.
CHAPTER VII.
Arrived in his room Lord Berkeley made preparations for that first and
last and all-the-time duty of the visiting Englishman–the jotting down
in his diary of his “impressions” to date. His preparations consisted in
ransacking his “box” for a pen. There was a plenty of steel pens on his
table with the ink bottle, but he was English. The English people
manufacture steel pens for nineteen-twentieths of the globe, but they
never use any themselves. They use exclusively the pre-historic quill.
My lord not only found a quill pen, but the best one he had seen in
several years–and after writing diligently for some time, closed with