Barrison remembered that Roberts, the stage doorkeeper, had reported that the threatening letters had been delivered by a street urchin. He asked to see Freddy, but he was at school—for a wonder. His mother appeared to resent the fact, and to look upon it as so many hours wasted. She promised that the evening would find him free to talk to the gentleman as much as the gentleman desired. Barrison had given her a dollar to start with, and promised another after he had conferred with Freddy. When he left, he had an unsatisfied instinct that he had somehow missed something Lowry had expected him to get. The unseen Freddy was in his mind as he went uptown—in his mind to such an extent that he spoke of him to Tony Clay when he met him on Broadway and accepted that youth’s urgent pleading to go to a place he knew of where they could get a good drink. The boy was in his mind when, on coming out of the café, they found themselves stormbound by crosstown traffic and looking in at the windows of Kitty Legaye’s taxicab. Her charming, white-skinned face framed in its short black veil and black ruff, lighted to intense interest as she caught sight of them. “Have you any news?” she cried, in carefully subdued excitement. Barrison could not bring himself to tell her that the police had caught up with her sister, and that she was on her way back to face her accusers. Kitty saw his hesitation, and thought it might be because Clay was present. “Let me give you a lift!” she said impulsively. Barrison accepted, after a second’s cogitation. “Go on to my rooms, Tony,” he said. “I’ll be there shortly.” He got into the machine with Miss Legaye, and said to her gravely, as they began to move again: “Tell me, please, Miss Legaye, you had no intercourse with your sister since she came to New York—I mean until you sent her the money, and she answered you?” “None!” she said quickly and frankly. “Did your letter come by mail or by a messenger boy?” She started, and looked at him in surprise. “By mail,” she replied. “Why?” “Perfect nonsense,” he said, really feeling that the impulse which had made him speak was an idle one. “I’ve found a boy who did a lot of errands for her, and I wondered if you could identify him, that’s all.” She shook her head; though it was getting dusk, he could see her dark eyes staring at him. “I don’t know anything about that,” she said. “What sort of a boy, and what do you expect to prove by him?” “He’s merely a witness,” Barrison hastened to explain. “You see, the—the letter you let me have corresponds exactly in writing to the letters that came to Mortimer, threatening him. We think this is the boy who carried Mrs. Blankley’s messages while she was in New York. That’s all. You see, though it’s a small link, it is one that we can’t entirely overlook.” “Have you seen him?” she asked.