Christian fiction; Love stories; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Nineteen twenties -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
The man called Teneyke had decided to give his confidence to Cottar.
He had reached the limit of his detective powers and needed aid. All
research in the way of telephone books and directories of the region
round about Meadow Brook had failed to bring forth any one whose name
fitted the letters of the paper which he treasured carefully, wrapped
in clean tissue paper and further enshrined in a dirty envelope, in his
inside pocket.
He sought Cottar early in the evening in his own home, a dull little
clapboard house with a side gate and a brick walk. The front door was
always locked and one entered by the kitchen door at the side into a
room lighted by a kerosene lamp on a little high shelf, and misty with
the smoke of Cottar’s pipe. Cottar’s old wife was deaf as a post, and
went pottering round with a little shoulder shawl across her neck and
took no notice of anybody. When Teneyke came in Cottar signed to her
and she lit a candle and went up a shallow stairway into the wall.
One could hear her shuffling tread overhead. The two men waited till
the boards overhead stopped creaking. Then Cottar lifted his bushy
eyebrows, and let his beady, wise little eyes peer out speculatively.
“Wal, Tyke?”
“All safe?”
“All safe.”
Tyke got out the paper and unwrapped it. Cottar put on his spectacles.
Together they silently studied the writing. “oyce Radw.” It seemed
to mean nothing to Cottar at first. But Tyke produced a page filched
from a public telephone book. There were three R’s that might have been
possible, Radwan, Radwanski, and Radwell. The shrewd Cottar decided
that the first two were too foreign. The handwriting looked plain and
well formed, not as he thought a foreigner would write. Radwell might
be the name. He could think of no other. The first name they decided
must be Boyce, although that was a boy’s name and not a girl’s, and
would, if correct, throw them off the track altogether. Perhaps it was
a middle name. So they speculated.
Cottar made a careful, painstaking copy of the writing and folded it
away in his grimy pocket for further use.
“Well, I don’t figger it out _yet_, but there’s ways. If she’s a Meadow
Brook dame we’ll find her out. Just keep yer mouth shet an’ yer eyes
open an’ most things comes out. Gimme time.”
Came a tap on the door, and Bill entered:
“Man, I had a hard time findin’ ye!” he said, casting a furtive glance
about with his restless, bloodshot eyes. “Hey there, Tyke, I thought
you got pinched!”
“What, me! Think again, Bill. Take a slicker guy’n that cop to lay
hands on me. I double crossed him, I did. Seen Taney?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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