For the first time, Wilkins looked at Mr. Bates and thought swiftly. Having thought for half a minute, he had accomplished a complete circle and was exactly where he had started. It was plain that the maid Felice was somewhere else; equally plain was it that, for the purpose of the moment, the maid Felice could satisfactorily be in but one place—and that right here!

Had she merely been out for a little time he could have taken the trunk to her room and, opening the lid a bit, could have fled with his task accomplished; she was, however, out permanently—so that the very best Wilkins had accomplished at the end of a full minute was:

"Out? Quite so. But where has the young person gone, if you please?"

Mr. Bates scowled angrily.

"We don't know, I've told you!" he said sharply. "When one of the help's dismissed under circumstances like that, we don't trouble to ask where she's going and we don't keep her address."

"But she might be having mail to forward——" Wilkins essayed hopefully.

"Any mail that comes for her'll be handed to the carrier again," Bates snapped. "And now will you get her box out of here, you? I can't have it about, and I've no time this morning to argue with you. The master's daughter's disappeared and we're all on edge."

"And not a soul in the world knowing where she's gone, poor lamb!" sniveled the under-laundress, laying a hand on the trunk that held Mary. "And her that home-loving she never——"

"Hush!" said Mr. Bates.

The woman subsided into her apron.

"Whatever's taken her, she's trying to get home! She's trying——" she sobbed.

"Well, whatever's taken her, get that trunk out of here!" the Dalton butler snapped.

Was there anything else to do? Wilkins, having thought until his head ached, could not see it. If the girl had a friend among the help, it might be left with the friend; but the only woman of the household present had taken pains to look properly scandalized at each mention of Felice. Or if Mary hadn't cautioned him particularly against this Bates, he would have risked taking Bates aside and communicating the astounding truth.

But since things were as they were, and not as they might have been; since Bates was actually glaring at him now, and would, in another minute, be banging the trunk back to the street himself, there was really nothing left for Wilkins but to grip the wide handle and start slowly for the door again.

It was bad! Oh, it was very bad, with Mary in there and very likely stifling to death, but Wilkins shuffled slowly back to the taxicab with his burden, slowly and carefully put it aboard once more.

"What's wrong?" asked the driver.

"The party it was for had left!" said Wilkins.

"Where to?"

Wilkins pondered heavily.

"Back again where we came from," he sighed. "But you might go rather slow, I think. Like enough I'll change my mind and decide to take it somewhere else. I can't say at the moment."

Clambering after himself, he looked about while the man hopped out and cranked his motor. Failure had leaped out and blasted the flower of success, just as every petal had opened wide! Utter failure was the portion of Wilkins—and the policeman on the far corner was watching him in the most disconcerting way.

Squinting over there in the sunshine, the blue-coat's instinct was telling him that there was something wrong about the trunk. He moved to the other side of the lamp-post and stared on; and Just here his sergeant appeared from the side street and the officer addressed him, even pointing with his club at the taxi!

Faithful Wilkins's heart stopped! When an officer approaches and asks one to open a trunk or bag, one opens it or goes up. Having opened this one, it was almost a certainty that one would go up also—and with that one would go Mary Dalton, and in the evening papers one of the most startling stories of the year would be featured.

We all of us have a peculiar way of seeing our own side of any given case before examining the others; so it was with Wilkins. Wilkins saw himself dismissed from what was really a very excellent, very well-paid, very easy job; he saw Anthony cursing himself and his stupidity and ordering him out of his sight forever!

"Can't you start?" he shot at his driver.

"Well, I'm just sitting down," that person stated acidly.

"Well, get her a-going and then turn around; don't go over there, but go back up this block! And start!" said Wilkins.

The cab started and turned, and he did not look behind. He had not need for that; he could feel the official eyes boring through the back of the cab and into himself; he could hear running feet; once he was quite sure he heard the pounding of a club on the curb, which meant that every officer in hearing would flock into sight. Wilkins, becoming stony of countenance after a struggle, shut his teeth and sat back, quite forgetting that Mary might welcome a breath or two of the outer air.

It was possible, after a little, if the police did not appear and stop the machine, that he would order the cab into the country and there release Mary, hat or no hat—but somehow Wilkins doubted whether he would make that decision.

What he craved more than anything else just now was security behind brick and stone walls—like the Lasande's.

Be it said that Hobart Hitchin had regained enough of his normal senses to feel distinctly startled. His vision cleared considerably as he looked at Theodore Dalton, crouching behind his table. He felt, in spite of himself, that Dalton's grief was perfectly genuine, but the utter mystery of the thing swept over him, too, and he leaned forward and asked:

"What did you say, sir? Your son?"

"These—these!" Dalton said, clutching the trousers. "My son Dick's—his fishing suit."

"And your son, where is he supposed to be?"

"In the north woods, somewhere, although I haven't heard from him for a week," Dalton choked; and then, being a powerful character, he threw off the hideous numbness and straightened up. "What did you say? What were you trying to tell me? Where did you get—these?"

"From the dumbwaiter where——"

"What dumbwaiter?"

"In the Hotel Lasande."

"When?"

"Very early this morning."

"How did you come to——"

"I saw a young man when he went into the house last night; I live there, you know. I had reason to think that something happened to him overnight, and this morning I managed to snatch this suit from the dumbwaiter as it passed my door. Further——"

"What was he doing there?"

"He came home last night with a gentleman you know," said Hobart Hitchin. "One Anthony Fry!"

"The liniment Fry?" cried Theodore Dalton.

His gray face turned white and then purple. He rose and ran one hand through his shaggy gray mop.

"The liniment Fry," Hitchin said.

"My boy—my Dicky went home with that man?"

"A boy was introduced to me as David Prentiss."

Dalton's hands clutched his forehead for a moment and the grinding of his teeth was audible.

"You were saying—what were you saying about a trunk?"

"I said that the remains of the boy had been brought here by Fry's personal servant, sir. I saw them taken into the side gate not ten minutes ago and——"

"Come!" said Theodore Dalton.

He reached out and, gripping Hitchin's arm, decided that gentleman's course for him. As Theodore Dalton strode to the back of the house and to the back stairs, as he went straight down and into and through the kitchen, Hobart Hitchin merely went along, partly in stumbles, partly in little jumps; and so they came to the laundry and, nerving himself until the veins stood out on his temples, Dalton faced his butler and spoke thickly:

"The—the trunk!"

"Beg pardon, sir?" said Bates humbly.

"The trunk which was brought here! Where is it?"

"Oh, that trunk, sir. It was took away again, Mr. Dalton. The person that brought it said it was for Felice, the maid we dismissed this morning, sir."

"For Felice?" Dalton echoed.

"Quite so, sir."

"Why was it sent to Felice?"

"I couldn't say, sir," said Bates, stepping to the gate and opening it. "There it goes, sir, on the cab. Shall I send after it?"

Dalton leaned heavily against Hobart Hitchin.

"Goes—where?"

"Well, I'm not sure as it was his voice, sir, but I think, standing out here, I heard him tell the man to go back where they came from."

Followed quite a tableau.

Bates stared respectfully at his master. Hobart Hitchin, who had not as yet had time to form a complete new set of theories, merely stood and frowned. But although Theodore Dalton did not move, he did not seem still.

His face, in fact, mirrored the whole gamut of human emotions of the darker sort; overwhelming sorrow was there at first, and then, succeeding slowly, amazement and unbelief, and after them trembling anger. Black fire shot from his deepset eyes, as they switched to Hitchin; his lips became a ghastly white line; his mighty chest rose and fell; and now he had taken Hobart Hitchin's arm again and led him back to a dusky corridor.

"You!" said Dalton. "I don't know who you are and why you came here; but this I ask you, and if you don't answer truthfully, God help you! Does that trunk, to your belief, contain the body of the boy you call Prentiss?"

"To my almost certain knowledge!"

"And he was murdered in the apartment of Anthony Fry?"

"He was, sir, and——"

"Come!" said Theodore Dalton, once more, and they returned to the study in a series of stumbles and little jumps.

Once in the dark, handsome room Theodore Dalton walked straight to the cabinet in the corner and, with a key, opened the topmost drawer. He extracted therefrom a heavy automatic pistol and slipped out its magazine. He opened a box of cartridges and filled the little box; and when it had clicked into the handle of the automatic, and the pistol itself was in his pocket.

"There was a cab leaving the door when you came," he said quietly. "Did you dismiss it?"

"I—I believe so," said Hobart Hitchin, who as an actual fact liked neither the sight of the weapon nor the sight of Dalton just now.

"Bates!" Dalton spoke into the little interior telephone. "My car!"

"If you're going somewhere——" escaped Hobart Hitchin.

"I am going to see Anthony Fry. You are going with me. You are going to accuse him, in my presence, of the crime," said Theodore Dalton, with the same ominous calm. "And when you have accused him, I shall do the rest! Sit down!"

Anthony Fry, because there was more relief in him than flesh and blood, leaned back in his pet chair and gazed at the ceiling, long, steadily, happily. He would have liked to smoke, yet he declined to make the effort which would break the delicious lassitude that possessed him. He would have liked to sing, too, and clap Johnson Boller on the back and assure him that all was well in the best possible world—but for a little it was enough to sneer smilingly at Boller's bent head.

He, poor fool, fancied that all was over because his infernal wife had threshed around a bit and gone off clutching poor little Mary's hat—a funny thing in itself. Instead of getting up and cheering at his prospective freedom from the matrimonial yoke, Johnson was groaning there and clawing into his hair; and now, by the way, he was raising his head and turning toward his old friend.

"Anthony!" Johnson Boller said faintly.

"What is it?"

"You wouldn't pull a thing like that on me?"

"I certainly shall, if you ever try to tell the truth about Miss Dalton."

"But what did she ever do for me, to let her confounded reputation wreck my life? All she ever did was to make a female ass of herself by wearing pants and going to a prize fight and then listening to you. Why should a thing like that bust up my home?"

Anthony shrugged his shoulders.

"It may not," said he.

"It has!" Johnson Boller said feverishly. "And listen, Anthony! You and I have to stand together, old man. The girl's out of the way, so that clears your skirts for a while, but what about Hitchin? What if he calls in the police this afternoon?"

Anthony laughed; with Mary out of the way he was another man.

"We'll let that take care of itself. For that matter, why not go down and tell Hitchin the truth and show him what a fool he's making of himself? He's a gentleman, I suppose; if we swear him to secrecy he's not likely to talk."

"And if we call him off, then we'll find Bee and tell her the truth, too?" Johnson Boller asked eagerly. "She's a lady, Anthony. If we swear her to secrecy, she'll never talk—and maybe we could explain it to the girl and have her verify what we say, hey?"

Anthony actually yawned and stretched as he arose.

"We'll settle Hitchin first," he smiled. "Come along!"

He lounged out of the flat and to the stairs, Boller hugging close to his side. He yawned again as he pressed the buzzer of the Hitchin apartment, and he even smiled condescendingly at the inscrutable Japanese who answered.

"Mr. Hitchin," said Anthony. "Say that Mr. Fry and Mr. Boller wish to see him, if you please."

The Japanese shook his head.

"He no home!"

"Out?" said Anthony in some astonishment.

"Yes, sir, li'l while ago," the Oriental said. "He go very quick."

"And he will be back—when?"

"Mr. Hitchin no say, sir!" the Japanese sighed.

Therefore they turned back to the stairs; and as they came to the foot of the flight Johnson Boller gripped his friend's arm suddenly and looked whitely at him.

"It's all over!" he said.

"What?"

"The trunk! The trunk she went out in! Didn't he say something about not sending out anything?"

"That has no connection with his going out!" Anthony snapped, although some of his insouciance fled.

"Hasn't it, though? Well, it has every connection! He's chased Wilkins and, long before this, he's called a cop and had him taken in! The whole thing's over, Anthony. That trunk's in a police station now and they've opened it—and your Dalton man's daughter is behind the bars as a suspicious character before this."

Anthony Fry's scowl turned black.

"Can't you see me peaceful, without trying to smash it by babbling a lot of rot like that?" he demanded angrily. "Wilkins must have the girl inside her home by this time and——"

"Why should you be peaceful and happy when my home's wrecked?" Johnson Boller asked hotly.

"We will not discuss it out here," said his host, leading the way upstairs again.

Dismally he trailed through the door he had left so cheerfully a moment ago. Johnson Boller trailed after him even more dismally, albeit with some grim satisfaction at his altered mien.

"We can sit down here and wait now," he stated. "We don't have to do anything more than that, Anthony. We can figure it all out. Either he has had the trunk and Wilkins taken in, or he's just determined that our guilt is cinched. If the former, all creation knows by this time that Dalton's daughter was up to something—queer. If there's a general alarm out for her, they'll recognize her when she comes out of that trunk. On the other hand, if Hitchin has let the trunk go, he's having warrants sworn out by this time and they're dusting off the seats in the nearest patrol-wagon. Either Dalton gets you and probably me, too, or the police get us. That's all that can happen and——"

"Stop!" Anthony barked. "I don't care a rap what happens, so long as the girl is not laid open to suspicion, and I don't believe Hitchin or anybody else is going to contrive that, once Wilkins started to deliver the trunk. That is my sole concern now—to shield her!"

Having delivered with commendable sentiment, Anthony demonstrated his entire calm by rising with a nervous jerk, by listening, and finally by striding to the door of his apartment, which he opened.

Thereafter he stepped back suddenly, for with one searing glance at him a woman had passed.

She was in the living-room even now, and smiling horribly at Johnson Boller. She was, in a word, Johnson Boller's wife, and her black eyes snapped more ominously than before.

"Don't touch me!" she was saying, as Johnson Boller approached with hands outstretched. "I've come back, but only to tell you!"

"To tell me that you've changed your mind, little pigeon?" Johnson Boller cried brokenly. "You're going to let Pudgy-wudgy——"

"Faugh!" said the lady, and from her radiated the Spanish grandmother and all the strain implied—blood lust, vengeance! "No, I've come to tell you that I mean to make that woman's name a scandal and a byword from end of town to the other. Not some woman's name, but the woman's name!"

"But——"

"How can I do it?" laughed the different Mrs. Boller. "I've found out who she is!"