He figured out his railway connections, and went to the office to give his orders. As he passed the open window his attention was caught by two men who had met on the sidewalk outside. One of them was talking excitedly and flourishing a paper which looked much like the typewritten sheet the clerk had shown him. It was the man with whom Burton had clashed at the station.
"Who is that man,--the smaller one?" he asked.
"That's the man I was telling you about,--Orton Selby."
"So that's the man who is bringing this charge against Dr. Underwood! Who's the other?"
"Mr. Hadley. A banker and one of our prominent citizens."
Burton crumpled up his time-table and tossed it into the waste-basket quite as though he had had no intention of taking the next train out of town.
"Will you direct me to Dr. Underwood's house now?" he said.
Burton could have found his way to the Red House without any further direction than the clerk had given him, and it was chiefly curiosity that made him try another experiment on the way. He had come by the side street, and half a block away he saw the large red house facing toward Rowan street. At the rear ran a high board fence, separating the grounds belonging to the house from an alley which cut through the middle of the block. As he passed the end of the alley, he noticed a man and a woman talking together by the gate which opened into the house grounds. The woman's excited gestures caught his attention. She was shaking her hands at the man in a way that might have meant anger or impatience or merely dismissal, but which certainly meant something in a superlative and violent degree. Then she darted in through the gate, slamming it shut, and the man came running down the alley toward the street with a curious low lope that covered the ground amazingly, though it seemed effortless.
Burton had stopped, at first to see whether it were a case that called for interference. Now, as the man jumped out just in front of him, he spoke to him,--as much from a desire to see the face of a man who ran so furtively as from curiosity as to the effect the doctor's name would have. "Pardon me," he said. "Can you tell me if this is where Dr. Underwood lives?"
But this time his cast drew nothing. The man stopped a moment, cast a sharp though furtive glance up at his questioner, and shook his head.