Beyond the moment that the cab driver had deposited his fare beside
the curb in front of the house in which the Russian had been quartered
there was no clue. No one had seen either the boy or the ape from
that instant--at least no one who still lived. The proprietor of
the house identified the picture of the lad as that of one who had
been a frequent visitor in the room of the old man. Aside from this
he knew nothing. And there, at the door of a grimy, old building
in the slums of London, the searchers came to a blank wall--baffled.
The day following the death of Alexis Paulvitch a youth accompanying
his invalid grandmother, boarded a steamer at Dover. The old lady
was heavily veiled, and so weakened by age and sickness that she
had to be wheeled aboard the vessel in an invalid chair.
The boy would permit none but himself to wheel her, and with his
own hands assisted her from the chair to the interior of their
stateroom--and that was the last that was seen of the old lady by the
ship's company until the pair disembarked. The boy even insisted
upon doing the work of their cabin steward, since, as he explained,
his grandmother was suffering from a nervous disposition that made
the presence of strangers extremely distasteful to her.
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