"I hope nothing has happened to the boy," he said to himself, uneasily, as he drew out his watch. "It is time he was here. Have I done rightly in leaving him in the clutches of a company of unprincipled men? Yet I[Pg 267] don't know what else I could do. If I had accompanied him to the door, my appearance would have awakened² suspicion. If through his means I can get authentic³ information as to the interior of this house, which I strongly suspect to be the headquarters of the gang, I shall have done a good thing. Yet perhaps I did wrong in not giving the boy a word of warning."

 

Mr. Baker took the cigar from his mouth and strolled into the opposite room, where several of the hotel guests were either reading the morning papers or writing letters. He glanced quickly about him, but saw no one that resembled Grit⁴.

 

"Not here yet?" he said to himself, "perhaps he can't find the hotel. But he looks too smart to have any difficulty about that. Ha! whom have we here?"

 

This question was elicited⁵ by a singular figure upon the sidewalk. It was a tall, overgrown boy, whose well-worn suit appeared to have been first put on when he was several years younger, and several inches shorter. The boy was standing⁶ still, with mouth and eyes wide open, staring in a bewildered way at the entrance of the hotel, as if he had some business therein, but did not know how to go about it.

 

[Pg 268]

 

"That's an odd-looking boy," he thought. "Looks like one of Dickens' characters."

 

Finally the boy, in an uncertain, puzzled way, ascended⁷ the steps into the main vestibule, and again began to stare helplessly in different directions.

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