At the entrance of the great building which housed the Whitney office the two motors came to a halt. Ferguson went in with the others saying he would see if he could be of any use, and if he was not wanted would return to the street level and wait. In the elevator Mr. Janney, who had been informed en route of Molly's real status, eyed her morosely, but when the car stopped forgot everything but the urgencies of the moment, and crowded out, tremulous and stumbling, on his wife's heels.

They were met by Wilbur Whitney who in a large efficient way, distributed them: – Ferguson was sent back to the street to wait, Molly waved to a chair in the hall, and the old people conducted up the passage to his private office. In a room opening from it Suzanne lay stretched on a sofa, restoratives and stimulants at hand, and a girl stenographer to fan her. She had revolted against the presence of Esther, who had been removed from her sight and shut in the sanctum of a junior partner.

Mrs. Janney went in to see her and the old man fell upon Whitney. It was Price's doing – they were certain of it, his wife had said so at once. He was bound to get back at them some way, he'd said he would – he'd left Grasslands swearing vengeance, and had been only waiting his opportunity. The lawyer nodded in understanding agreement and, Mrs. Janney returning, they drew up to the table and conferred in low voices.

What Whitney said confirmed the Janneys' belief. He told of his interview with Price; the man's anger and threats. Nevertheless he was of the opinion that the plot to kidnap the child had not been undertaken in sudden passion, but had probably been for some time germinating in Chapman's mind. The news of Bébita's loss, telephoned to the office by Miss Maitland, while it had shocked, had not altogether surprised him, though he had hardly thought the young man's desire to get square would have carried him to such lengths. Immediately after Esther's communication, George had telephoned to Price's office receiving the answer that he was not there but could probably be found at the Hartleys' at Cedar Brook. From the Hartleys they had learned that Mr. Price was in town, and had sent word that morning he would not come out this week-end.

There were other circumstances which the lawyer said pointed to Price. These they could hear from Mrs. Babbitts who had made some important discoveries. He rose to send for her, but Mrs. Janney stayed him with a gesture – before they went into that she would like to see Miss Maitland and hear from her exactly what had occurred. Mr. Whitney, suavely agreeable, sent a summons for Esther, then softly closed the door into the room where Suzanne lay.

"Mrs. Price is very bitter against her," he said in explanation.

Mrs. Janney, too wrought up for polite hypocrisies, said brusquely:

"Oh, that's exactly like Suzanne. She has no balance at all. Of course we can't blame Miss Maitland – it's not her fault."

Mr. Whitney dropped back into his revolving desk chair and swung it toward her with a lurch of his body:

"She tells a very clear story – extremely clear. I'll let you get your own impression of it and then we'll have a talk with Mrs. Babbitts and you can see – "

A knock on the door interrupted him; in answer to his "Come in," Esther entered. She halted a moment on the threshold, her eyes touching the faces of her employers questioningly, as if she was not sure of her reception. But Mrs. Janney's quick, "Oh, Miss Maitland, I want to see you," brought her across the sill. Though she looked harassed and distressed, her manner showed a restrained composure. She took a chair facing them, meeting their glances with a steady directness. Mrs. Janney's demand for information was promptly answered; indeed her narrative was so devoid of unnecessary detail, so confined to essentials, that it suggested something gone over and put in readiness for the telling.

She had taken Bébita to the dressmaker and the oculist, the child accompanying her into both places. At the third stop, Justin's, she had persuaded Bébita to stay in the taxi. She had left it at the curb and had not been more than ten minutes in the store. When she came out it was gone. She had spent some time looking for it, searched up and down the street, and, though she was frightened, she could not believe anything had happened. Her idea had been that Bébita, tired of waiting or wanting to play a joke on her, had prevailed on the driver to return to the Fifth Avenue house. She had hailed a cab and gone back there and it was not till she saw Mrs. Price that she realized the real extent of the calamity. Mrs. Price had been utterly overwhelmed, and, not knowing what else to do, she had called up Grasslands for instructions.

Mr. Janney, who had been twisting and turning on his chair, burst out with:

"The man – the driver – did you notice him?"

She lifted her hands and dropped them in her lap.

"Oh, Mr. Janney, of course I didn't. Does any one ever look at those men? He never got off his seat, opened the door by stretching his arm round from the front. I have a sort of vague memory of his face when I called him off the stand, and I think – but I can't be sure – that he wore goggles."

"It's needless to ask if you remember the number," Mrs. Janney said.

The girl answered with a hopeless shake of the head.

"You say you ran about looking for the taxi" – it was Mr. Janney again – "Why did you waste that time?"

"Mr. Janney," she leaned toward him insistent, but with patience for his afflicted state, "I thought it had gone somewhere farther along. You know how they won't let the vehicles stand in Fifth Avenue. I supposed it was down the block or round the corner on a side street. I asked the doorman but he hadn't noticed. I looked in every direction and even when I finally gave up and went after her I hadn't an idea that she'd been stolen."

"Time lost – all that time lost!" wailed the old man and began to cry.

"Come, come, Mr. Janney," said Whitney, "don't despond. It's not as bad as all that, and I'm pretty confident we'll have her back all right before very long."

Mr. Janney, with his face in his handkerchief, emitted sounds that no one could understand. His wife silenced him with a peremptory, "Be quiet, Sam," and returned to Miss Maitland:

"You say you dissuaded her from going into Justin's. Why did you do that?"

For the first time the girl lost her even poise. As she answered her voice was unsteady: "We were so pressed for time and I knew I could get through much quicker without her. That's why I did it – begged her to stay in the taxi and she said she would," – she stopped, biting on her under lip, evidently unable to go on.

There was a moment's silence broken by Mrs. Janney's voice low and grim:

"The man heard you and knew that was his chance."

Miss Maitland, her eyes down, the bitten lip showing red against its fellow, said huskily:

"You must blame me – you can't help it – but I'd rather have died than had such a thing happen."

Mr. Janney began to give forth inarticulate sounds again and his wife said with a sort of dreary resignation:

"Oh, I don't blame you, Miss Maitland. Nobody does. Mrs. Price is not responsible; she doesn't know what she's saying."

"Of course, of course," came in Whitney's deep, bland voice, "we all understand Mrs. Price's feelings – quite natural under the circumstances. And Miss Maitland's too." He rose and pressed a bell near the door. "Now if you've heard all you want I'll call in George and we'll talk this over. And Miss Maitland," he turned to her, urbanely kind and courteous, "could I trouble you to go back to Mr. Quincy's office; just for a little while? We won't keep you waiting very long this time."

A very dapper young man had answered the summons and under his escort Esther withdrew. Whitney went to a third door connecting with his son's rooms, opened it and said in a low voice:

"George, go and get Molly. We're ready for her now."

Coming back, he stood for a moment by the desk, and swept the faces of his clients with a meaning look:

"What you're going to hear from Mrs. Babbitts will be something of a shock. She's unearthed several rather startling facts that in my opinion bear on this present event and what led up to it. It's a peculiar situation and involves not only Price but Miss Maitland."

Mrs. Janney stared:

"Miss Maitland and Chapman! What sort of a situation?"

"At this stage I'll simply say mysterious. But I'm afraid, my dear friend, that your confidence in the young woman has been misplaced. However, before I go any further I'll let you hear what Mrs. Babbitts has to say and draw your own conclusions."

What Mrs. Babbitts had to say came not as one shock but as a series. Mrs. Janney could not at first believe it; she had to be shown the notes of the telephone message, and dropped them in her lap, staring from her husband to Wilbur Whitney in aghast question. Mr. Janney seemed stunned, shrunk in his clothes like a turtle in its shell. It was not until the lawyer, alluding to the loss of the jewels, mentioned Miss Maitland's possible participation either as the actual thief or as an accomplice, that he displayed a suddenly vitalized interest. His body stretched forward, and his neck craned up from its collar gave him more than ever the appearance of a turtle reaching out of its shell, his voice coming with a stammering urgency:

"But – but – no one can be sure. We mustn't be too hasty. We can't condemn the girl without sufficient evidence. Some one else may have been there and – "

Mrs. Janney shut him off with an exasperated impatience:

"Oh, Sam, don't go back over all that. I don't care who took them; I don't care if I never see them again. It's only the child that matters." Then to Whitney the inconsequential disposed of, "We must make a move at once, but we must do it quietly without anything getting into the papers."

Whitney nodded:

"That's my idea."

"What are you going to do – go directly to him?"

"No, not yet. Our first step will be made as you suggest, very quietly. We're going to keep the matter out of the papers and away from the police. Keep it to ourselves – do it ourselves. And I think – I don't want to raise any false hopes – but I think we can lay our hands on Bébita to-night."

"How – where?" Mr. Janney's head was thrust forward, his blurred eyes alight.

"If you don't mind, I'm not going to tell you. I'm going to ask you to leave it to me and let me see if my surmises are correct. If Chapman has her where I think he has, I'll give her over to you by ten o'clock. If I'm mistaken it will only mean a short postponement. He can't keep her and he knows it."

"The blackguard!" groaned the old man in helpless wrath.

Mrs. Janney wasted neither time nor energy in futile passion. She attacked another side of the situation.

"What are we to do with Miss Maitland? You can't arrest her."

"Certainly not. She's a very important person and we must have her under our eye. You must treat her as if you entirely exonerated her from all blame – maintain the attitude you took just now when talking with her. If my immediate plan should fail our best chance of getting Bébita without publicity and an ugly scandal will be through her. She must have no hint of what we think, must believe herself unsuspected, and free to come and go as she pleases."

"You mean she's to stay on with us?" Mr. Janney's voice was high with indignant protest.

"Exactly – she remains the trusted employee with whose painful position you sympathize. It won't be difficult, for you won't see much of her. You'll naturally stay here in town till Bébita is found. What I intend to do with her is to send her back to Grasslands with a competent jailer – " he paused and pointed where Molly sat, silent and almost forgotten.

For a moment the Janneys eyed her, questioning and dubious, then Mrs. Janney voiced their mutual thought:

"Is Mrs. Babbitts, alone, a sufficient guard?"

The lawyer smiled.

"Quite. Miss Maitland doesn't want to run away. She knows too much for that. No position could be better for our purpose than to leave her – apparently unsuspected – alone in that big house. She will be confident, possibly take chances." He turned on Molly, glowering at her from under his overhanging brows. "The safest and quickest means of communication with Grasslands, when the family is in town and the servants ignorant of the situation, would be the telephone."

That ended the conference. Mrs. Janney went to get Suzanne and Molly received her final instructions. She was to return to Grasslands with Miss Maitland, Ferguson could take them in his motor. She was to sit in the back seat with the lady and casually drop the information that she had come to town in answer to a wire from the Whitney office. She might have seen suspicious characters lurking about the grounds or in the woods. On no account was she to let her companion guess that Price was suspected, and any remarks which might place the young woman more completely at her ease, allay all sense of danger, would be valuable.

They left the room and went into the entrance hall where Esther, and presently Mrs. Janney, joined them. Whitney struck the note of a reassuring friendliness in his manner to the girl, and the old people, rather reservedly chimed in. She seemed grateful, thanked them, reiterating her distress. In the elevator, going down, Molly noticed that she fell into a staring abstraction, starting nervously as the iron gate swung back at the ground floor.

Ferguson, waiting on the curb, saw them as they emerged from the doorway. His eyes leaped at the girl, and, as she crossed the sidewalk, were riveted on her. Their expression was plain, yearning and passion no longer disguised. If she saw the look she gave no sign, nodded to him, and, leaving Molly to explain, climbed into the back seat and sunk in a corner. Though the afternoon was hot she picked up the cloak lying on the floor and drew it round her shoulders.

The drive home was very silent. Molly gave the prescribed reasons for her presence and heard them answered with the brief comments of inattention. She also touched on the other matters and found her companion so unresponsive that she desisted. It was evident that Esther Maitland wanted to be left to her own thoughts. Huddled in the cloak, her eyes fixed on the road in front, she sat as silent and enigmatic as a sphinx.

CHAPTER XVIII – THE HOUSE IN GAYLE STREET

The Janney party left the office soon after Molly and Esther. They had decided to stay at the St. Boniface hotel where rooms had already been engaged, and, with Suzanne swathed in veils and clinging to her mother's arm, they were escorted to the elevator and cheered on their way by the two Whitneys. When the car slid out of sight the father and the son went back into the old man's room.

It was now late afternoon, the sun, sinking in a fiery glow, glazed the waters of the bay, seen from these high windows like a golden floor. The day, which had opened fresh and cool, had grown unbearably hot; even here, far above the street's stifling level, the air was breathless. The men, starting the electric fans, sat down to talk things over and wait. For the machinery of "the move" spoken of by Wilbur Whitney already had been set in motion.

Immediately after Esther's telephone message O'Malley had been called up and, with an assistant, dispatched to watch the Gayle Street house. As Whitney had told his clients, the news of the child's disappearance had hardly surprised him. Chapman's anger and threats portended some violent action of reprisal, and, even as the lawyer had questioned what form it might take, came the answer. Chapman had stolen his own child and had a hiding place prepared and waiting for her reception. It was undoubtedly only a temporary refuge, he would hardly keep her in such sordid surroundings. The Whitneys saw it as a night's bivouac before a longer flight. And that flight would never take place; every exit was under surveillance, there was no possibility of escape. The two men, smoking tranquilly under the breath of the electric fans, were quietly confident. They would bring Chapman's vengeance to an abrupt end and avert an ignominious family scandal. Meantime they awaited O'Malley – who was to return to the office for George – and as they waited discussed the kidnapping, knowledge supplemented by deductions.

When Chapman had decided on it he had instructed Esther, telling her to inform him when the opportunity offered. This she could do by letter, or, if time pressed, by telephone from a booth in the village. The trip to New York had been planned several days in advance and he had been advised of it, its details probably telephoned in the day before. He – or some one in his pay – had driven the taxi. It had been stationed in the rank near the house, where in the dead season there were few vehicles and from whence the extra one needed by Suzanne would naturally be taken. That Esther, with a long list of commissions to execute, should leave the child in the cab was an entirely natural proceeding. Her explanation of her subsequent actions was also disarmingly plausible, and the minutes thus expended gave the time necessary for the driver to make his get-away. Before she had acquainted Suzanne with the news, the child was hidden in the room at 76 Gayle Street.

Whether the room was taken for this purpose was a question. If it was then the idea had been in Chapman's mind for weeks – it was the "coming back" he had hinted at when he left Grasslands. If, however, it had been hired as a place of rendezvous with his confederate, it had assisted them in the carrying out of their plot – might indeed have suggested it. For as a lair in which to lie low it offered every advantage – secluded, inconspicuous, the rest of the floor untenanted. They could keep the child there without rousing a suspicion, for if Chapman was with her – and they took for granted that he was – she would be contented and make no outcry. She loved him and was happy in his society.

"Poor devil!" growled the old man. "You can't help being sorry for him, even if he did do it to hit back. It's his child and he's fond of her."

George gave a short laugh:

"I fancy it's more the hitting back than the fondness. Chapman's not shown up lately in a very sentimental light. It wouldn't surprise me if he'd ransom in the back of his mind. But we'll put an end to his ambitions or parental longings or whatever's inspiring him." He looked at his watch, then rose. "It's a quarter past seven and O'Malley's due at the half hour. It's understood we're to bring the child here first?"

His father gave an assenting grunt and hitched his chair into the current of air from the fan.

George turned on the lights, their tempered radiance flooding the room, the windows starting out as black squares sewn with stars.

"I don't quite see what I'm going to say to him," he muttered, a sidelong eye on his father.

"Say nothing," came the answer. "Bring the child back here – that's your job. Leave him to me. Mrs. Janney and I'll have it out with him when the time comes."

On the tick of half-past seven O'Malley appeared. Trickles of perspiration ran down his red face, and his collar was melted to a sodden band.

"Gee," he panted as he ran a handkerchief round his neck, "it's like a Turkish bath down there in the street."

"Well," said George, impatient of all but the main issue, "is it all right?"

"Yep – I've left two men in charge – every exit's covered. And there's only one they could use – no way out back except over the fences and through other houses."

"He could hardly tackle that with a child."

"He couldn't tackle it alone and make it – not the way I've got things fixed. And I've worked out our line of action; Stebbins relieved me at half-past six and I went and had a séance with the janitor. Said I was coming round later with a man who was looking for a room – the room I'd been inquiring about. That'll let us in quiet; right up to the top floor and no questions asked."

"The only hitch possible can come from Chapman – he may be ugly and show his teeth."

The old man answered:

"I guess he'll be tractable. If he's inclined to argue bring him along with you. It's after eight. I don't want to sit here half the night. Get busy and go."

O'Malley had a taxi waiting and they slid off up the deserted regions of Broadway. After a few blocks they swerved to the left, plunging into a congeries of mean streets where a network of fire-escapes encaged the house fronts. The lights from small shops illumined the sidewalks, thick with sauntering people. The taxi moved slowly, children darting from its approach, swept round a corner and ran on through less animated lanes of travel, upper windows bright, disheveled figures leaning on the sills, vague groupings on front steps. At intervals, like the threatening voice of some advancing monster, came the roar of the elevated trains, sweeping across a vista with a rocking rush of light. O'Malley drew himself to the edge of the sea and peered out ahead.

"We're not far off now," he muttered. "We'll stop at the corner of the block – there's a bookbinding place there that's dark and quiet. If we go to the door they might catch on, get panicky, and make a row."

At one end of the street's length the lamp-spotted darkness of Washington Square showed like a spangled curtain. The cab turned from it and crossed a wide avenue over which the skeleton structure of the elevated straddled like a vast centipede. Beyond stretched a darkling perspective touched at recurring intervals with the white spheres of lamps. It was a propitious time, the evening overflow dispersed, the loneliness of the deep night hours, when a footfall echoes loud and a solitary figure looms mysterious, not yet come.

The cab drew up at the curb by the shuttered face of the book bindery and the man alighted. With a low command to the driver, O'Malley, George beside him, walked up the block. From a shadowy doorway a figure detached itself, slunk by them with a whispered hail and vanished. Toward the street's far end they stopped at a door level with the sidewalk, and O'Malley, bending to scrutinize a line of push buttons, pressed one.

"Is this the place?" George whispered, in startled revulsion.

"This is the place. And a good one for Price's purpose as you'll see when you get in."

The young man noted the battered doorway, slightly out of plumb, then stepped back and glanced at the façade. Many of the windows, uncurtained and open, were lit up. Those of the top floor – dormers projecting from a mansard roof – were dark. He was about to call O'Malley's attention to this, when the sounds of footsteps within the house checked him.

There was a rattling of locks and bolts and the door swung open disclosing a man, grimy, old and bent, a lamp in his hand. He squinted uncertainly at them, then growled irritably as he recognized O'Malley:

"Oh, it's you. I thought you wasn't comin'? If you'd been any later you wouldn't 'a got me up."

O'Malley explained that the gentleman was detained – couldn't get away any earlier, very sorry, but they'd be quick and make no noise – just wanted to see the rooms and get out.

In single file, the janitor leading, they mounted the stairs. To the aristocratic senses of George the place seemed abominable. The staircase, narrow and without balustrade, ran up steeply between walls once painted green, now blotched and smeared. At the end of the first flight there was a small landing, a gas bracket holding aloft a tiny point of flame. It was as hot as an oven, the stifling atmosphere impregnated with mingled odors of cooking, stale cigar smoke, and the mustiness of close, unaired spaces.

On the second landing one of the doors was open, affording a glimpse of a squalid interior, and a man in his shirt sleeves bent over a table writing. He did not look up as they creaked by. From somewhere near, muffled by walls, came the thin, frail tinkling of guitar strings. As they ascended the temperature grew higher, the air held in the low attic story under the roof, baked to a sweltering heat. The janitor muttered an excuse – the top floor being vacant the windows were kept shut – it would be cool enough when they were opened.

He had gained the last landing, which broadened into a small square of hall cut by three doors. As he turned to one on the left, O'Malley slipped by him and drew away toward that on the right. There was a moment of silence, broken by the clinking of the man's keys. He had trouble in finding the right one and set his lamp down on a chair, his head bent over the bunch. George was aware of O'Malley's figure casting a huge wavering shadow up the wall, edging closer to the right hand door.

The key was found and inserted in the lock and the janitor entered the room, his lamp diffusing a yellow aura in the midst of which he moved, a black, retreating shape. With his withdrawal the light in the hall, furnished by a bead of gas, faded to a flickering obscurity. O'Malley's shadow disappeared, and George could see him as a formless oblong, pressed against the panel. There was a moment of intense stillness, the guitar tinkling faint as if coming through illimitable distances. The detective's voice rose in a whisper, vital and intimate, against the music's spectral thinness:

"Queer. There's not a sound."

His hand stole to the handle, clasped it, turned it. Noiselessly the door opened upon darkness into which he slipped equally noiseless.

That slow opening was so surprising, so dreamlike in its quality of the totally unexpected, that George stood rooted. He stared at the square of the door, waiting for voices, clamor, the anticipated in some form. Then he saw the darkness pierced by the white ray of an electric torch and heard a sound – a rumbled oath from O'Malley. It brought him to the threshold. In the middle of the room, his torch sending its shaft over walls and floor, stood the detective alone, his face, the light shining upward on the chin and the tip of his nose, grotesque in its enraged dismay.

"Not here – d – n them!" and his voice trailed off into furious curses.

"Gone?" The surprise had made George forgetful.

"Gone – no!" The man almost shouted in his anger. "How could they go? – Didn't I say every outlet was blocked. They ain't been here. They ain't had her here. Get a match, light the gas – I got to see the place anyway."

The torch's ray had touched a gas fixture on the wall and hung steady there. As the men fumbled for matches, the janitor came clumping across the hall, calling in querulous protest:

"Say – how'd you get in there? That ain't the place – it's rented."

He stopped in the doorway, scowling at them under the glow of his upheld lamp. A match sputtered over the gas and a flame burst up with a whistling rush. In the combined illumination the room was revealed as bleak and hideous, the walls with blistered paper peeling off in shreds, the carpet worn in paths and patches, an iron bed, a bureau, by the one window, a table. The janitor continuing his expostulations, O'Malley turned on him and flashed his badge with a fierce:

"Shut up there. Keep still and get out. We've got a right here and if you make any trouble you'll hear from us."

The man shrank, scared.

"Police!" he faltered, then looking from one to the other. "But what for? There's no one here, there ain't ever been any one – it's took but it's been empty ever since."

O'Malley who had sent an exploring glance about him, made a dive for a newspaper lying crumpled on the floor by the bed. One look at it, and he was at the man's side, shaking it in his face:

"What do you say to this? Yesterday's – how'd it get here? Blew in through the window maybe."

The janitor scanned the top of the page, then raised his eyes to the watching faces. His fright had given place to bewilderment and he began a stammering explanation – if any one had been there he'd never known it, never seen no one come in or go out, never heard a sound from the inside.

"Did you see any one – any one that isn't a regular resident – come into the house yesterday or to-day?" It was George's question.

He didn't know as he'd seen anybody – not to notice. The tenants had friends, they was in and out all day and part of the night. And anyway he wasn't around much after he'd swept the halls and taken down the pails. Yesterday and to-day he guessed he'd stayed in the basement most of the time. If anybody had been in the room – and it looked like they had – it was unbeknownst to him. The lady had the key; she could have come in without him seeing; it wasn't his business to keep tab on the tenants. He showed a tendency to diverge to the subject of his duties and George cut him off with a greenback pushed into his grimy claw and an order to keep their visit secret.

Meantime O'Malley had started on an examination of the room. There was more than the paper to prove the presence of a recent occupant. The bed showed the imprint of a body; pillow and counterpane were indented by the pressure of a recumbent form. On its foot lay a book, an unworn copy, as if newly bought, of "The Forest Lovers." The table held an ink bottle, the ink still moist round its uncorked mouth, some paper and envelopes and a pen. There was a scattering of pins on the bureau, two gilt hairpins and a black net veil, crumpled into a bunch. Pushed back toward the mirror was the cover of the soap dish containing ashes and the butts of four cigarettes.

O'Malley studied the bureau closely, ran the light of his torch back and forth across it, shook out the veil, sniffed it, and put it and the two hairpins carefully into his wallet. Then with the book and the paper in his hand he straightened up, turned to George, and said:

"That about cleans it up. There's nothing for it now but to go back."

The janitor, anxiously watchful, followed on their heels as they went down the stairs. Their clattering descent was followed by the strains of the guitar, thinly debonair and mocking as if exulting over their discomfiture. In the street the same shape emerged from the shadows and slouched toward them. A grunted phrase from O'Malley sent it drifting away, spiritless and without response, like a lonely ghost come in timid expectation and repelled by a rebuff.