The Sunday following, in his rooms at one of the hotels, Mr. Pentecost had a stack of the morning papers and was lazily running through the sensational accounts of the collapse of the Postal Reply Swindle, with their graphic descriptions of the arrest of the Italian supposed to have been at the head of it—of his wild insistence that everything was all right—of the frantic mob of investors fighting and screaming for their money—together with the statements and opinions of inspectors, district attorneys, financiers, Post Office authorities and what not, on the various aspects of the colossal fraud. It was a most amusing mess—one he’d have enjoyed immensely if his crazy Italian hadn’t got the hooks in him. He was sore as the devil about that. As he carelessly turned the pages in other parts of one of the huge Sunday editions, his eye was suddenly caught and held by the heading of a full-page write-up in one of them, which read: HERMIT INVENTOR OF WEST ROXBURY MECHANICAL GENIUS SOLE OCCUPANT OF OLD CRIPPS MANSION MARVELOUS MACHINES BUT NO SALES Pentecost had been lolling about in bathrobe and slippers, but now he sat erect and read on rapidly. The article strongly reinforced the notion he’d got from the headlines that he might find something out there that would come in nicely for Harker. His plan had been to leave for New York on the “Merchants’ Limited” (that is, the Sunday train running at that time on the “Merchants’” schedule), but he decided to take one of the night expresses instead, so he could get out to Roxbury and see what the fellow had. The article spoke of the mansion as being on Torrington Road, but gave no further indication of its locality, and even at so early a stage of a barely possible chance, Pentecost would no more have thought of making enquiries than of swallowing rat poison. There were two or three pictures of the house, and several of the mechanical genius himself, which might help some. He took a taxi, dismounting as soon as they reached Torrington Road. After paying the fare and observing that the vehicle had safely disappeared townward with no questionable hesitation, he walked up the road. It was late in the afternoon and warm—the date being precisely mid August. Mr. Pentecost, as he thought he could, recognized the old Cripps mansion from the newspaper illustrations. As he walked up the weed-grown and rutted driveway there was nothing he failed to take in: the ruinous gateway at the entrance with its great square posts—once painted white, but now a streaked and dirty brown, and one of them considerably off plumb; the neglected lawns with their tangles of overgrown grass and weeds and ancient misguided shrubbery that had long since heeded the call of the wild; the old elm trees clustered about the house and densely shading it; and the mansion itself, much needing paint and repair, particularly as to the huge wooden columns supporting the roof of a front portico two stories in height.