Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/127

 eccentricities of the auditors and which ones have to have strings of clippings before they would admit their papers had printed the items, and which ones kept track and mailed checks regularly.

"I'll be away a week or two," Urleigh declared, as they left the restaurant. "So long!"

With that another man was missing from his many haunts. Not a soul in the city knew where the free-lance reporter had gone and no one knew for certain whether he would ever return or not.

Urleigh, with his suitcase packed, stepped aboard a train down the Ohio. He changed cars at Paducah, and arrived in Hickman. Checking his suitcase in the baggage room, he went immediately to the hospital, and the superintendent admitted him to the cot-side of the wounded river man, Daniel Gost.

"Hello, Dan!" Urleigh greeted him. "Heard you were here—thought I'd drop in and say how-de-do!"

The wounded man looked up at Urleigh sharply, making no reply.

"I'm on my vacation," Urleigh explained. "I've always wanted to drop down the Ohio, so I took a train down, stopping off at the towns"

"Dropped down on a train," Gost repeated. "That the way you trip the river?"

"Why not?" Urleigh asked.