I was growing steadily more depressed:  I loathed my errand and its necessity.  I had always held that a man who played the spy on a woman was beneath contempt.  Then, I admit I was afraid of what I might learn.  For a time, however, this promised to be a negligible quantity.  The streets of the straggling little mountain town had been clean-washed of humanity by the downpour.  Windows and doors were inhospitably shut, and from around an occasional drawn shade came narrow strips of light that merely emphasized our gloom.  When Hotchkiss’ umbrella turned inside out, I stopped.

“I don’t know where you are going,” I snarled, “I don’t care.  But I’m going to get under cover inside of ten seconds.  I’m not amphibious.”

I ducked into the next shelter, which happened to be the yawning entrance to a livery stable, and shook myself, dog fashion.  Hotchkiss wiped his collar with his handkerchief.  It emerged gleaming and unwilted.

“This will do as well as any place,” he said, raising his voice above the rattle of the rain.  “Got to make a beginning.”

I sat down on the usual chair without a back, just inside the door, and stared out at the darkening street.  The whole affair had an air of unreality.  Now that I was there, I doubted the necessity, or the value, of the journey.  I was wet and uncomfortable.  Around me, with Cresson as a center, stretched an irregular circumference of mountain, with possibly a ten-mile radius, and in it I was to find the residence of a woman whose first name I did not know, and a man who, so far, had been a purely chimerical person.

Hotchkiss had penetrated the steaming interior of the cave, and now his voice, punctuated by the occasional thud of horses’ hoofs, came to me.

“Something light will do,” he was saying.  “A runabout, perhaps.”  He came forward rubbing his hands, followed by a thin man in overalls.  “Mr. Peck says,” he began,—­“this is Mr. Peck of Peck and Peck,—­says that the place we are looking for is about seven miles from the town.  It’s clearing, isn’t it?”

“It is not,” I returned savagely.  “And we don’t want a runabout, Mr. Peck.  What we require is hermetically sealed diving suit.  I suppose there isn’t a machine to be had?” Mr. Peck gazed at me, in silence:  machine to him meant other things than motors.  “Automobile,” I supplemented.  His face cleared.

“None but private affairs.  I can give you a good buggy with a rubber apron.  Mike, is the doctor’s horse in?”

I am still uncertain as to whether the raw-boned roan we took out that night over the mountains was the doctor’s horse or not.  If it was, the doctor may be a good doctor, but he doesn’t know anything about a horse.  And furthermore, I hope he didn’t need the beast that miserable evening.

While they harnessed the horse, Hotchkiss told me what he had learned.

“Six Curtises in the town and vicinity,” he said.  “Sort of family name around here.  One of them is telegraph operator at the station.  Person we are looking for is—­was—­a wealthy widow with a brother named Sullivan!  Both supposed to have been killed on the Flier.”