This
time he tried to conquer the expectation of finding Davenport at home;
yet it would struggle up as he approached the house of Mrs. Haze. The
same deadening disappointment met him as before, however; and was
mirrored in the landlady's face when she saw by his that he brought no
news.
Mrs. Haze had come up from preparations for dinner. Hers was a house in
which, the choice being "optional," sundry of the lodgers took their
rooms "with board." Important as was her occupation, at the moment, of
"helping out" the cook by inducing a mass of stale bread to fancy itself
disguised as a pudding, she flung that occupation aside at once, and
threw on her things to accompany Larcher to police headquarters. There
she told all that was necessary, to an official at a desk,--a big,
comfortable man with a plenitude of neck and mustache. This gentleman,
after briefly questioning her and Larcher, and taking a few illegible
notes, and setting a subordinate to looking through the latest entries
in a large record, dismissed the subject by saying that whatever was
proper to be done _would_ be done. He had a blandly incredulous way with
him, as if he doubted, not only that Murray Davenport was missing, but
that any such person as Murray Davenport existed to _be_ missing; as if
he merely indulged his visitors in their delusion out of politeness; as
if in any case the matter was of no earthly consequence. The subordinate
reported that nothing in the record for the past two days showed any
such man, or the body of any such man, to have come under the all-seeing
eye of the police.
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