  There was consternation in the Powell household when Miss Loring arrived without Elsie. “Where is she?” cried Gerty. “Here, isn’t she?” returned the bewildered nurse. “No, of course not! Why did you think so?” And then Nurse Loring told how she had received a message from Elsie saying she had been obliged to return to New York suddenly, that she had gone with some friends, and for Miss Loring to follow as soon as she could pack off. “Did she write you a note?” asked Mrs. Powell. “No; the word was brought by a man.” “What sort of a man?” “A decent appearing person, who said he was the chauffeur of Miss Powell’s friends with whom she had gone.” “What did he look like?” “Ordinary looking, like a servant, but respectful and well-mannered, and he had a great many gold filled teeth. Do you know him?” “No; and I think there’s something wrong. Elsie never would have done such a thing. She hasn’t any friends down there with their car,—that I know of. Has she, mother?” “No,” Mrs. Powell agreed. “There is something wrong.” She clasped her hands nervously. “Do send for Mr. Coe, Gerty.” Coley Coe came on the jump, and listened to the tale with a grave face. “I should say there was!” he exclaimed, “something very wrong! That girl has been kidnapped and the villains mean to keep her till after her birthday! I’ve been fearing some such performance, but I thought she was safe with the nurse.” Miss Loring spoke quickly: “Oh, I was so careful of her! I never let her out of my sight for a moment, but if I had known there was any danger of this sort, I should have been doubly careful! Why didn’t you tell me?” “My own suspicions were not definite enough,” said Coe. “Nobody blames you, Miss Loring, you could not help it. In the crowd, the trick was easily turned. Now, Mrs. Powell, don’t cry so; you need fear no harm for your daughter, no bodily harm, I mean. She will likely be treated with greatest consideration and kindness,—but—” “But I don’t understand,” Gerty looked doubtful,—“why should any one want to kidnap Elsie?” “It’s a moil, Mrs. Seaman,” Coe said, shaking his long thatch out of his eyes. “I’m not yet discouraged, but I’m getting to see that we’re up against not only a very clever villain but an utterly unscrupulous one.” “Aren’t all villains that?” “Not entirely. Some draw the line at certain crimes. But this master-fiend, for that’s what he is—” “Do you know him?” Gerty asked eagerly. “No, I don’t! I know so much about him,—I’ve so many sidelights on him, so much evidence against him, and yet I lack the one connecting link that would give me his identity. I have my suspicions—but, oh, there were some things I wanted to ask Miss Powell!” “Perhaps I can tell you, she talked over everything with me.” “No; I only wanted her to tell me over again the little things she picked up that first morning at the Webbs. You know the white marks on the floor? Well, they’re explained. Miss Webb was in the room that evening, but it was before her brother came in, and she, foolishly enough! tried to conceal the fact, lest she be suspected of having Kimball Webb in hiding!” “She was suspected.” “Yes, but she isn’t now. At least, not by me. That speech, ‘if it should be!’ referred to spooks; and I had her trailed, you know, and though she was reported as going on mysterious secret errands, they were,—what do you suppose?” “Oh, what?” “Trips to a Beauty Doctor!” “Poor Henrietta! It’s pathetic, but I can’t help laughing. And Mrs. Webb, she went on secret errands, too, didn’t she?” “Yes; and hers were to sÉances with people that she didn’t want to acknowledge as her friends! Common people,—as mediums usually are, and some cronies that Mrs. Webb only cultivated in the pursuit of her psychic researches! No, there’s no reason to suspect that the mother or sister know where Webb is. Nor, do I see any chance of finding his hiding place before the thirtieth. After that, I’m very sure he will be freed.” “But now Elsie’s gone, too!” “Yes, and I’ve no doubt, taken away by the same people.” A few questions asked of the nurse gave Coe no information concerning the man with the gold teeth. “Oho!” he cried; “it is the same gang, then! We must get them! Do describe him further, Miss Loring!” But her detailed description was only such as called up a picture of an average looking man, large, strong, with dark hair and eyes, healthy colour, and with no striking characteristic but the unusual number of gold filled teeth in the front part of his lower jaw. “Enough to identify him,” said Coe, “but not enough to find him! We could scour the dentists’ records, but we’d have to visit thousands, and then, maybe, fail because the work was done in another city! If we only had one more line on him.” “Maybe he’s the Sherman’s man,” mused Gerty. “What! What’s that?” said Coe, quickly. “Why, Elsie picked up a paper in Kim’s room, and it was one of those little toothpick wrappers, tissue, you know, and it was stamped ‘Sherman’s.’” “Yes, the big restaurant.” “Yes; now Kimball Webb never went to Sherman’s in his life! I know he didn’t, and Elsie says she knows he didn’t. He isn’t that sort of a man.” “Why, Sherman’s is all right.” “Yes, for the class of people that like it. But Kim is fastidious and Elsie says she knows of his prejudice against Sherman’s. Of course she’s been out with him so much she knows his tastes.” “And this paper was in Webb’s room! When?” “Elsie found it the day after or a few days after his disappearance. She threw it away—” “That doesn’t matter, the fact of its being there is the important thing! You see, the man who got in the room may have dropped it—” “How could any man get in the room! You’re crazy!” “’Deed I’m not! Some man did get in that room, and carry off Kimball Webb while Webb was unconscious! Now, you put that away in your mind, and keep it there, for it’s true!” “How did he get in?” “Mrs. Seaman, if any one ever asks me that question again, I’m going to run away! I don’t know how he got in,—but, he did get in,—and, if this interests you, I’m going to find out how he got in! But even more than that, I want to find the man! That’s the objective point. To find how he got in, would be fearfully interesting and would gratify my overweening curiosity,—I think overweening is the word for it! Anyhow, it’s the biggest order of curiosity I’ve ever experienced in my career! But, overweeninger yet, is my desire to get the man! It’s an obsession with me,—a craze! My fingers itch for him,—and I feel he’s so near—and yet so far! But this little old toothpick paper may be a clue! You know what flimsy little bits they are, how they cling in a pocket and are easily flirted out with a handkerchief or such matter!” “Wouldn’t it be a good deal of a coincidence if your man, a frequenter of Sherman’s, left the paper,—as one might a visiting card?” “Don’t be sarcastic, Mrs. Seaman!” Coe smiled good-naturedly. “And the coincidence wouldn’t be so extraordinarily strange! They say, a man can’t enter and leave a room, without making half a dozen at least ineffaceable marks of his presence there. Now, the only reason I doubted the entrance of my man, as you call him, was the fact that I hadn’t been able to find any trace,—not even the slightest, of his visit there. That made me think Webb might have been lured out,—stop! don’t you dare ask me how he got out. We know he did get out,—and as I told you I’m going to find out how. Well, this little paper changes the whole map of my cogitations. Now, do you know of anybody who does go to Sherman’s?” “I do not. My friends don’t care for the place.” “Probably not; but I’ll bet it’s the great little old rendezvous of Friend Gold-teeth, and his boss.” “Oh, he isn’t the principal, then?” “Surely not! The man higher up is a big-brained chap, and working for big stakes! Sherman’s! Ho, ho! Pardon my unholy glee, but I’m ’way up over this thing! And now I’ll skip. Look for me when you see me!” Coe went away and went straight to Wallace Courtney’s. He began by saying frankly, “Do you want to help me to find Kimball Webb, or don’t you?” “I do,” returned Courtney, “I’m not a heathen! I’m working on my hay while the sun shines, but I’d do anything in my power to find Webb even if it meant the failure of my masterpiece. You know, I think he had a spell of divine afflatus and went away to finish his own play by himself.” “Leaving a bride, practically at the altar!” “Oh, I think Elsie’s in the secret. She knows where he is! I shouldn’t wonder if they were married before he went,—that would make her fortune all right.” “Well, what do you think of this? Elsie’s kidnapped too, now!” “That carries out my theory. She’s gone to him.” “Oh, you’re impossible! Well, tell me this, and I’ll scat. Do you know anybody who frequents Sherman’s? Or who goes there occasionally?” “I should hope not! Why?” “Oh, don’t be so supercilious. Sherman’s is decent if it is popular.” “I know it. I’ve been there. It’s just a big, gay dance hall. No, I don’t number any of its regular patrons among my friends. Kimball Webb was not one, if that’s what you want to know.” “That isn’t what I want to know. Don’t any of your crowd go there at times,—anybody who was at Webb’s dinner?” “Why, Coe, I’d tell you if I could. I suppose every chap at that dinner has been inside of Sherman’s, but I doubt if many of them have been more than once or twice as a mere matter of curiosity. If that’s all you’re asking me, clear out, I’m busy.” Coe was about to clear out, when Lulie Lloyd stopped him. “I know somebody who goes to Sherman’s a lot,” she said; “he sometimes takes me there.” “Thank you, Miss Lloyd,” Coe said, politely, “but I mean some one of Mr. Webb’s friends.” “So do I,” said the girl, her colour rising and her expression a little defiant. “Oh,” and Coley Coe began to see things, as in a glass darkly. “Some one who was at Mr. Webb’s dinner?” “Yes,” she spoke almost sullenly. “May I ask his name?” “I’ll tell you, but I don’t want Mr. Courtney to hear.” “I don’t want to,” the busy playwright returned, and Lulie Lloyd leaned over and whispered a name into the ear of Coleman Coe. He nodded his head, as one who was not overwhelmingly surprised, and continued in a low tone, “And do you know a man with ever so many gold filled teeth in his lower jaw?” “Do I?” she cried. “Why, he’s that man’s valet!” “And a friend of yours?” “He was! He isn’t now!” “Ah,—he went back on you?” “He did all of that,—and then some!” And then Lulie Lloyd looked frightened, looked as if she regretted deeply what she had involuntarily blurted out, and she returned to her typewriter and began madly pounding the keys. But Coe had learned enough. He left quickly, and hopping on a street car, he arrived at the house where lived the man whose name Lulie had whispered to him. The man whose valet had the auriferous teeth. The man he asked for was out, and though not an easy matter, Coe succeeded by dint of threats and bribes to gain admission to the room where, he said, he would await his host’s return. Left alone Coleman Coe proceeded to ransack the desk, which stood, carelessly open. He ran rapidly through a sheaf of letters and bills, now and then shaking his feathery forelock wildly, in mad bursts of satisfaction. The bills, paid and unpaid, were illuminating. The letters even more so, and Coe grew more and more beaming of face as he proceeded. He kept a wary eye on the door, and at last finding an old letter that specially interested him, he read it three times, though this was the quickly mastered gist of it: “I think Simeon Breese will be a safe man for you.” The address of the said Simeon followed, and this short bit of information seemed to afford Coley the deepest pleasure. The underscoring of the word safe, particularly entertained him, and he laughed as at a great joke. “I knew it!” he cried, though silently. “I knew it!” Then, replacing such papers as he had visibly disarranged, Coe sauntered forth and left the house. “Tell him I couldn’t wait any longer,” he said, casually to the door man and went his way. His way took him to the establishment of Simeon Breese, Safe Maker. “You make safes?” was Coe’s totally unnecessary query. “Yes, sir,” admitted Breese, “what can I do for you?” “I don’t exactly want a safe,” Coe said, with what was meant to be an ingratiating wink. “I,—that is,” he looked embarrassed, “I want a sort of a—well, a very confidential matter.” “I don’t understand, sir.” There was no invitation to proceed, but Coe went on: “I want a secret entrance built—” “Whatever made you come to me on such an errand, then? My business is building safes,—not building means to rob them.” “Nonsense, that’s not the idea. I merely want a private passage from one room to another in my house,—” “You’re way off, sir. You’ve come to the wrong place, entirely. Good morning, sir.” “But,—stay,—wait a minute. I’m recommended here by—” And Coe whispered in the ear of Breese the same name Lulie Lloyd had whispered to him. Breese looked utterly blank. “Don’t know your friend, sir; never heard of him. Good morning!” This last dismissal was accompanied by a glance that meant a very definite invitation to leave, and as there seemed small use in staying Coe left. But he was disappointed. He had hoped to get a line on the secret entrance which he knew gave into Kimball Webb’s room. One forlorn hope came into his breast. He would try to get hold of the valet, the gold-toothed valet, who had played fast and loose with Lulie Lloyd. This showed him to be a man of not unimpeachable morals, and he might be useful. He went boldly back to the house he had so recently left, and inquired if his friend had yet returned. “No, sir,” the imperturbable doorman informed him. “Then is his man in,—his valet?” “Bass? That he ain’t. He’s left.” “He has? How long ago?” “Oh, a matter of a couple of months or more now.” Ah! Not a great discrepancy between that and the date of Kimball Webb’s disappearance! “Funny looking man, Bass,” Coe said, casually. “All right, I should say.” “Queer teeth, at least.” “Yes,” the other admitted. “I shouldn’t care to carry round such an El Dorado, but Bass is rather proud of it.” “Well, we’re all more or less proud of something. You don’t know where Bass hangs out now?” “I don’t.” Coe sighed and turned away. He had so little to work on. That ridiculous toothpick paper,—Webb might easily have dropped that himself. Many a man would go to Sherman’s without the knowledge of his sweetheart, and think it no crime. And the safe builder seemed to dwindle to even greater insignificance. For if he hadn’t built the secret entrance which had to be in existence, who had, and how was Coe to find him. There was only one answer to it all. Coleman Coe was up against the necessity,—the actual bare necessity of finding that entrance for himself. No matter whether he could do it, or not, it had to be done, and he had to do it. As he had previously argued, the finding of the secret didn’t prove the perpetrator of it, nor did it produce Kimball Webb,—but these things might result from the discovery of how he was taken away, and anyway, there was no other way to find out. The master mind of the villain who took him was so clever, so diabolically canny, there was nothing to work on or to work with. And, now, Elsie was gone,—there was added necessity for hasty action and result. The motive, Coe had long ago decided, was the fortune. Just how that affected the case he wasn’t sure, but he felt an unshakable conviction that had it not been for the freak will left by Miss Elizabeth Powell there would have been no disappearance of either the bridegroom or the bride. This naturally turned his mind to Joe Allison. But he had long ago ceased to suspect Joe. He had, at first, but now he knew the chap, and it was impossible to connect him with such a crime as abduction to gain a fortune. Allison was money-mad, that Coe admitted,—but, well, he wouldn’t put it on Joe till he had to. He decided he’d go to the room of Kimball Webb and once again make those hopeless rounds of walls, ceiling and floor; doors and windows; chimney and bathroom window, which were all the points to be examined. He asked Miss Webb a few preliminary questions. How long had they lived in the house, and such things as that. This led nowhere. How could it possibly help to know they had lived there six years; to know where they had lived in Boston; to know when Kimball first met Elsie Powell; to learn why the Webbs didn’t fully approve of the match; all these things were as chaff which didn’t even show which way the wind blew. And Miss Webb’s attitude had greatly changed since the last time he talked with her. She had now begun to despair of ever seeing her brother again. With a womanly injustice she was inclined to blame Elsie for the whole trouble, but when Coe told her that Elsie, too, was mysteriously missing, she saw the thing as he did, that a gang or at least a pair of able and ingenious villains were at work. Coe was tempted to tell her of the valet, Bass, and his master, but concluded to wait a little longer. He asked for a talk with the two men servants, who had broken into Kimball’s room that morning, and this being willingly granted, he asked them again of any point or hint they might remember that hadn’t yet been brought. “No, sir,” said Hollis thoughtfully, “I’ve had all sorts of notions, but they’ve all been wrong, and sometimes I’m ready to agree with Mrs. Webb herself that it’s the spirits as done it.” “Rubbish!” Coe observed, and Hollis really agreed, though he had no wiser suggestion to make. “How long have you been here?” Coe asked, idly. “Two years, sir.” “And have you seen or heard anything mysterious?” “No; not myself, sir. But I’ve heard the other servants’ stories.” “So have I,” groaned Coe, wearily. “I’ve heard the tales of moans and groans that grew weirder each time,—the tales did, I mean. But I’ve heard nothing definite. Have you, Oscar?” “No, sir,” said the chauffeur, a taciturn chap. “Nor I’ve never seen anything myself, nor heard anything. But, Mr. Coe, everybody laughs at this, so I haven’t harped on it. You know I did smell bananas as I opened that door, that morning, and I’d swear to that on a stack of Bibles!” “Bananas!” “Yes, sir. And Mr. Kimball Webb didn’t care for bananas. I mean he wouldn’t think of having them in his bedroom to eat! He never did things like that. Now, doesn’t that smell mean something?” “It’s queer, but I can’t see any indicative evidence in it.” “No, sir, I s’pose not. But I’d like to know what made it. Maybe ghosts eat bananas.” |
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