"And where is his manufactory? Might be worth visiting, perhaps."
The other made a gesture, said something about northwest and
rushed to help a customer. Sweetwater took the opportunity to
slide away. More explicit directions could easily be got
elsewhere, and he felt anxious to return to Mr. Grey and
discover, if possible, whether it would prove as much a matter of
surprise to him as to Sweetwater himself that the man who
answered to the name of Wellgood was the owner of a manufactory
and a barrel or two of drugs, out of which he proposed to make a
compound that would rob the doctors of their business and make
himself and this little village rich.
Sweetwater made only one stop on his way to Mr. Grey's hotel
rooms, and that was at the stables. Here he learned whatever else
there was to know, and, armed with definite information, he
appeared before Mr. Grey, who, to his astonishment, was dining in
his own room.
He had dismissed the waiter and was rather brooding than eating.
He looked up eagerly, however, when Sweetwater entered, and asked
what news.
The detective, with some semblance of respect, answered that he
had seen Wellgood, but that he had been unable to detain him or
bring him within his employer's observation.
"He is a patent-medicine man," he then explained, "and
manufactures his own concoctions in a house he has rented here on
a lonely road some half-mile out of town."
"Wellgood does? the man named Wellgood?" Mr. Grey exclaimed with
all the astonishment the other secretly expected.
"Yes; Wellgood, James Wellgood. There is no other in town."
"How long has this man been here?" the statesman inquired, after
a moment of apparently great discomfiture.
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