This absence of the usual means of eliciting knowledge from the surrounding people, added to, rather than detracted from, the interest which Mr. Gryce was bound to feel in the case, and it was with a feeling of relief that a little before midnight he saw the army of reporters, medical men, officials, and such others as had followed in the coroner's wake, file out of the front door and leave him again, for a few hours at least, master of the situation. For there were yet two points which he desired to settle before he took his own much-needed rest. The first occupied his immediate attention. Passing before a chair in the hall on which a small boy sat dozing, he roused him with the remark: "Come, Jake, it's time to look lively. I want you to go with me to the exact place where that lady ran across you to-day." The boy, half dead with sleep, looked around him for his hat. "I'd like to see my mother first," he pleaded. "She must be done up about me. I never stayed away so long before." "Your mother knows where you are. I sent a message to her hours ago. She gave a very good report of you, Jake; says you're an obedient lad and that you never have told her a falsehood." "She's a good mother," the boy warmly declared. "I'd be as bad--as bad as my father was, if I did not treat her well." Here his hand fell on his cap, which he put on his head. "I'm ready," said he. Mr. Gryce at once led the way into the street. The hour was late, and only certain portions of the city showed any real activity. Into one of these thoroughfares they presently came, and before the darkened window of one of the lesser shops paused, while Jake pointed out the two stuffed frogs engaged with miniature swords in mortal combat at which he had been looking when the lady came up and spoke to him. Mr. Gryce eyed the boy rather than the frogs, though probably the former would have sworn that his attention had never left that miniature conflict. "Was she a pretty lady?" he asked. The boy scratched his head in some perplexity. "She made me a good deal afraid of her," he said. "She had very splendid clothes; oh, gorgeous!" he cried, as if on this question there could be no doubt. "And she was young, and carried a bunch of flowers, and seemed troubled? What! not young, and carried no flowers--and wasn't even anxious and trembling?" The boy, who had been shaking his head, looked nonplussed. "I think as she was what you might call troubled. But she wasn't crying, and when she spoke to me, she put more feeling into her grip than into her voice. She just dragged me to the drug-store, sir. If she hadn't given me money first, I should have wriggled away in spite of her. But I likes money, sir; I don't get too much of it." Mr. Gryce by this time was moving on. "Not young," he repeated to himself. "Some old flame, then, of Mr. Adams; they're apt to be dangerous, very dangerous, more dangerous than the young ones."