DUSKIN by Grace Livingston Hill

Author:Grace Livingston Hill [Hill, Grace Livingston]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781620296943
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2013-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

But the Arthwaits were not easily shaken.

They insisted on waiting at Duskin’s boardinghouse, to be sure that Duskin was there. In fact, Paisley asserted himself and went to the door to enquire before he would let his guest alight from the car.

It was a plain little boardinghouse in a side street at which they stopped, and Carol had great doubts as to whether they had found the right place.

“Is this where Mr. Philip Duskin is staying?” she called from the car to make sure.

The landlady was a quiet, plain-faced woman, and the hallway behind her looked neat and clean and homelike, but not what she would have thought Philip Duskin would have chosen for even a temporary home.

“Yes, his name is Philip,” the landlady said, “but he don’t stay here, if that’s what you mean. His trunk is here and he pays for his room, and he sometimes comes back to get a bath, but I haven’t seen him for a week. He’s been off to Chicago, and he’s been working night and day. I’m sure I don’t know how he stands it. I’m glad he ain’t my son. I’d be worried to death about him. He don’t look well either. He’s got dark circles under his eyes, and he hardly eats a bite, just drinks coffee and runs back when he does happen to be here for a meal.”

“Do you know where I can find him now?” asked Carol, feeling somehow as if she had been all wrong everywhere.

“Well, I reckon he’s nowhere but on the job, unless he had to go out and cut down a tree to make more boards for the floor, or gather mud to make some bricks or something. He beats all for how he works. But I can’t say where he is at present. If you leave your name I’ll tell him when he comes in, but I can’t say fer sure when that’ll be. May not be fer a week.”

Carol declined to leave a message, and she wished most heartily that she was rid of the Arthwaits. But when they began to suggest a ride out into the suburbs, she declined and asked them to leave her at the building as she wanted to find out if anybody was there.

There was a dim light in the lower floor, and Carol, as she picked her way up the steps, feared that the door might be locked and that no one would hear her knock. But it chanced that the door was ajar, for the boy from the restaurant in the next block had forgotten to slam it behind him when he came down after delivering the evening ration of coffee and sandwiches.

Carol slipped in and looked around her. Even in the one day since she had been there she recognized changes—handsome bronze grillwork had been set up around the first floor elevator shaft, and although the doors were not in yet, it began to take on the semblance of what it would be.

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