He interrupted her with a gesture and a glance at his watch.  “It always seems to me an unnecessary waste of time not to be direct.  You have called to collect my arrearage for board?”

“Well, yes.  I have.”

“Please tell your aunt that when I told her to give herself no concern about that matter, I exactly meant what I said.  To-night I received funds through the mail; the sum, twenty dollars.  Your aunt,” said he, obviously ready to return to his reading matter, “shall have it all.”

But Sharlee had heard delinquent young men talk like that before, and her business platform in these cases was to be introduced to their funds direct.

“That would cut down the account nicely,” said she, looking at him pleasantly, but a shade too hard to imply a beautiful trust.  She went on much like the firm young lady enumerators who take the census:  “By the way—­let me ask:  Have you any regular business or occupation?”

“Not, I suppose, in the sense in which you mean the interrogation.”

“Perhaps you have friends in the city, who—­”

“Friends!  Here!  Good Lord—­no!” said he, with exasperated vehemence.

“I gather,” was surprised from her, “that you do not wish—­”

“They are the last thing in the world that I desire.  My experience in that direction in New York quite sufficed me, I assure you.  I came here,” said he, with rather too blunt an implication, “to be let alone.”

“I was thinking of references, you know.  You have friends in New York, then?”

“Yes, I have two.  But I doubt if you would regard them as serviceable for references.  The best of them is only a policeman; the other is a yeggman by trade—­his brother, by the way.”

She was silent a moment, wondering if he were telling the truth, and deciding what to say next.  The young man used the silence to bolt his coffee at a gulp and go hurriedly but deeply into the preserves.

“My aunt will be glad that you can make a remittance to-night.  I will take it to her for you with pleasure.”

“Oh!-All right.”

He put his hand into his outer breast-pocket, pulled out an envelope, and absently pitched it across the table.  She looked at it and saw that it was postmarked the city and bore a typewritten address.

“Am I to open this?”

“Oh, as you like,” said he, and, removing the spoon, turned a page.

The agent picked up the envelope with anticipations of helpful clues.  It was her business to find out everything that she could about Mr. Queed.  A determinedly moneyless, friendless, and vocationless young man could not daily stretch his limbs under her aunt’s table and retain the Third Hall Back against more compensatory guests.  But the letter proved a grievous disappointment to her.  Inside was a folded sheet of cheap white paper, apparently torn from a pad.  Inside the sheet was a new twenty-dollar bill.  That was all.  Apart from the address, there was no writing anywhere.