Others, still more tantalising, began by knowing all about it, and ended by showing that they knew nothing.

At the police-office they looked at him hard, and demanded what he wanted with anybody of the name of Forrester.

At the post-office they told him curtly they could not tell him anything unless he could give the old lady's address.
At length, late in the day, he ventured to knock at the door of the clergyman of that part of the town in which the only few residents' houses seemed to be, and to repeat his question there.
The clergyman, a hard-working man who visited a hundred families in a week, at first returned the same answer as everybody else.

No, he did not know any one of that name.
"Stay," he said; "perhaps you mean old Mrs Wilcox." Jeffreys groaned.

Everybody had been suggesting the name of some old lady to him different from the one he wanted.
"She had a nephew, I think, who was a cripple.