It was absurd of course, but my eagerness caught fire from hers. I
credited the absurdity. In what sort of vision it mattered not she had
seen an old man like this leading our lost Amy.
I spoke to the driver, pointed out to him the old man, told him to
follow him without attracting his attention and offered him anything he
asked to keep him in sight.
Helen became possessed with the idea that we should lose sight of the
old man in the crowds. Nothing would do but we must get out and follow
him on foot. I remonstrated that we were much more likely to lose sight
of him that way, and still more likely to attract his notice, which
would be worse than losing him. She insisted and I told the man to keep
us in view.
A weary walk we had, though most of it was mere strolling after a
tottering figure or loitering about shops he entered.
It was near dusk and full time for us to be at home when he began to
walk fast. So fast he drew away from us in spite of us. He turned a
corner a half a square ahead of us. When we turned into that street he
was nowhere to be seen.
Helen was ready to faint with disappointment. With no hope of helping
her, but some instinctive idea of postponing the evil moment I urged
her to walk on, saying that perhaps we might see him. About the middle
of the square I suddenly stood still.
“What is the matter?” Helen asked.
“The house!” I said.
“What house?” she queried.
“The house in the puzzle picture,” I explained. “The house where I saw
Amy at the window.”
Of course she had not seen any house on the puzzle, but she caught at
the last straw of hope.
It was a poor neighborhood of crowded tenements, not quite a slum, yet
dirty and unkempt and full of poor folks.
The house door was shut, I could find no sign of any bell. I knocked.
No one answered. I tried the door. It was not fastened and we entered
a dirty hallway, cold and damp and smelling repulsively. A fat woman
stuck her head out of a door and jabbered at us in an unknown tongue.
A man with a fez on his greasy black hair came from the back of the
hallway and was equally unintelligible.
“Does nobody here speak English?” I asked.
The answer was as incomprehensible as before.