"Oh!-All right."

He put his hand into his outer breast-pocket, pulled out an envelope,
and absently pitched it across the table. She looked at it and saw that
it was postmarked the city and bore a typewritten address.

"Am I to open this?"

"Oh, as you like," said he, and, removing the spoon, turned a page.

The agent picked up the envelope with anticipations of helpful clues. It
was her business to find out everything that she could about Mr. Queed.
A determinedly moneyless, friendless, and vocationless young man could
not daily stretch his limbs under her aunt's table and retain the Third
Hall Back against more compensatory guests. But the letter proved a
grievous disappointment to her. Inside was a folded sheet of cheap white
paper, apparently torn from a pad. Inside the sheet was a new
twenty-dollar bill. That was all. Apart from the address, there was no
writing anywhere.

Yet the crisp greenback, incognito though it came, indubitably suggested
that Mr. Queed was not an entire stranger to the science of
money-making.

"Ah," said the agent, insinuatingly, "evidently you have _some_
occupation, after all-of--of a productive sort...."

He looked up again with that same air of vexed surprise, as much as to
say: "What! You still hanging around!"