A man with bristly red hair, and a not over-pleasant expression of countenance, stood behind the desk writing in a big book.
“Well, boy?” he asked sharply, as Ned entered the place. “If you’re selling anything we don’t want nothing.”
And then he resumed his writing without taking any more notice of Ned, who eyed him rather amusedly for a few seconds. Then he addressed him in a pleasant tone.
“I should like to get a room here, please.”
“Humph!” the red-haired man looked up with a grunt rather suggestive of a certain barnyard animal. “A room, did you say?”
“Yes, sir. An inexpensive one. In fact, as cheap a one as you have.”
“Sure _you_ can pay for it?” was the uncompromising reply.
“I certainly can or I shouldn’t have asked you for it,” said Ned, with the same flash in his eyes as had come there when Sam Hinkley had addressed him so rudely that morning.
Apparently the landlord of the Hinkley House concluded that he had gone far enough, for in a more amiable tone he said:
“I can let you have a good room for a dollar. Want your meals?”
“For to-day anyway,” responded Ned, who had saved from his garage work along the road enough to make him feel sure of himself for a short time, anyhow.
The business was soon concluded and Ned was at liberty to go up to his room. As soon as he was alone, he drew a chair to the window and sat there thinking deeply. Naturally his thoughts all reverted to one subject, and that was: what would be the verdict at High Towers?
“If they only knew how much depended upon it,” thought the boy to himself, and then his fancy roamed back to that final scene when he had looked on his uncle for the last time and had received what to him was almost a sacred trust. From this his thoughts turned to his ne’er-do-well cousin and the latter’s threats. His uncle had left no will and Ned was not quite certain in his own mind if he had any legal rights to the papers dealing with the electric hydroaeroplane.
“If they were to find out where I had come, they might try to make it unpleasant for me,” he thought with a momentary qualm, but the next moment he put these thoughts aside, and when he descended to dinner he was in a cheerful, hopeful frame of mind.
Mine host Hinkley’s meals were not of the sort that could be described as Lucullan, but they were solid, and Ned ate with the hearty appetite of a growing boy. After he had finished, he decided to saunter out and see what he could of the town. It would at least help to pass away the time till the next day, upon which he felt his fate hung. For the life of him he could not have settled down to read or write till he knew definitely what the verdict upon his unique legacy was to be.