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Updated: June 14, 2025
Full of his revelation, then, he rang the bell of his friend's lodging-house at precisely one o'clock the next day. "I'll go right up to Mr. Davenport's room," he said to the negro boy at the door. "All right, sir, but I don't think you'll find Mr. Davenport up there," replied the servant, glancing at a brown envelope on the hat-stand. Larcher saw that it was addressed to Murray Davenport.
From the department store he went to some other shops in the neighborhood and bought various necessaries which he stowed in his pockets. While he was eating luncheon, he thought over the matter of the money again, but came to no decision, though the time for placing the funds as Bagley had directed was rapidly going by, and the bills themselves were still in Davenport's inside coat pocket.
Up the old West Cambridge road, now North Avenue; past Davenport's tavern, with its sheltering tree and swinging sign; past the old powder-house, looking like a colossal conical ball set on end; past the old Tidd House, one of the finest of the ante-Revolutionary mansions; past Miss Swan's great square boarding-school, where the music of girlish laughter was ringing through the windy corridors; so on to Stoneham, town of the bright lake, then darkened with the recent memory of the barbarous murder done by its lonely shore; through pleasant Reading, with its oddly named village centres, "Trapelo," "Read'nwoodeend," as rustic speech had it, and the rest; through Wilmington, then renowned for its hops; so at last into the hallowed borders of the academic town.
But there was nothing addressed to Larcher or anybody else. "It certainly looks as if he'd meant to come back soon," remarked the landlady. "It certainly does." Larcher's puzzled eyes alighted on the table drawer. He gave an inward start, reminded of the money in Davenport's possession at their last meeting. Davenport had surely taken that money with him on leaving the house the next morning.
Seated in the waves of warmth from the gas-stove, the two went into the details of the case. Larcher not withholding the theory of Mr. Lafferty, and even touching briefly on Davenport's misunderstanding as to Florence Kenby. "Well," said Mr. Bud, thoughtfully, "if he reely went into a hallway in these parts, it would prob'ly be the hallway he was acquainted with.
"It can't be more than a hundred miles to leeward." "A hundred and ten." McCoy shook his head doubtfully. "It might be done, but it is very difficult. I might beach her, and then again I might put her on the reef. A bad place, a very bad place." "We'll take the chance," was Captain Davenport's decision, as he set about working out the course.
Martin and Davenport's great Illusions have been explained and their Hall in Kingsway, so long famous as the Home of Puzzledom, of necessity shorn of its glamour, one need not be surprised if those who delight in this kind of mystery, should turn elsewhere for their amusement.
"I don't care what you say; I'm going to finish what I have got to say. You'll probably not understand, you are too short-sighted. But what sort of future have you left the House? Order was kept all right when you were here; you are strong. But when you have left, who is going to take your place? Foster could have, but he's leaving. Davenport's leaving too, so's Collins.
He sought out Barry Tompkins, and asked, "Did you ever mention to me a man named Turl?" "Never in a state of consciousness," was Tompkins's reply; and an equally negative answer came from everybody else to whom Larcher put the query that day. He thought of friend after friend until it came Murray Davenport's turn in his mental review.
It was true, Larcher had seen in Davenport's copy of Keats, this passage marked: "... for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death." But an unhappy man might endorse that saying without a thought of possible self-destruction. So, for Davenport's very silence on that way of escape from his tasteless life, Larcher thought he might have taken it.
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