On Monday evening Ferguson heard from Molly of the scene in the Whitney office. He was incredulous and enraged, refusing to accept what she insisted were irrefutable proofs of Esther's guilt.

"What do I care about your 'phone messages and your suppositions!" he had almost shouted at her. "What do I care about what you think. You say she didn't answer the charges – she did, she denied them. That's enough for me."

There was no use arguing with him, he was beyond reason. She lapsed into silence, letting him rage on, seething in his wrath at the Janneys, the Whitneys, herself. When he tried to find out where Esther was, she was obdurate —that she couldn't tell him. All the satisfaction he got was that Miss Maitland was not under arrest, that she was "put away somewhere" and had agreed to the arrangement. He left, too angry for good-nights, with a last scattering of maledictions, leaping down the steps and swinging off across the garden.

The next morning he telephoned in to the St. Boniface Hotel and heard that the Janney party were out. Then he tried the Whitney office, got George on the wire, and was told brusquely that Miss Maitland's whereabouts could not be divulged to any one. He spent the rest of the day in a state of morose disquiet, denying himself to visitors, short and surly with his servants. Willitts was solicitous, inquired after his health and was told to go to the devil. In the kitchen quarters they talked about his queer behavior; the butler was afraid he'd had "a touch of sun."

Wednesday wore through to the early afternoon and his inaction became unendurable. He decided to go into town, look up the Janneys and force them to tell him where Esther was. He laid upon his spirit a cautioning charge of self-control; he must keep his head and his temper, use strategy before coercion. He had no idea of what he intended doing when he did find her, but the idea of getting to her, seeing her, championing her, transformed his moody restlessness into a savage energy. His servants flew before his commands; in the garage the chauffeur muttered angrily as orders to hurry were shouted at him from the drive.

Tuesday had been a day of strain for the Janneys. According to the telephone message, that night Chapman was to move the child from the city. He had been under a close surveillance for the two preceding days, and every depot and ferry housed watching detectives. Hope ran high until after midnight when reports and 'phone messages came dropping in upon the group congregated in the library of the Whitney house. No child resembling Bébita had left the city at any of the guarded points. Chapman had been in his office all day, had dined at a hotel and afterward had gone to his rooms and remained there. The plan of moving her had either been abandoned or had been intrusted to unknown parties who had taken her by motor through the city's northern end.

On Wednesday morning a consultation had been held at the Whitney office. This had been stormy, developing the first disagreements in what had been a unity of opinion. Mr. Janney was for going to Chapman and demanding the child and was seconded by the elder Whitney. Mrs. Janney was in opposition. She had no fear for Bébita's welfare – Chapman could be trusted to care for her – and maintained that a direct appeal to him would be an admission of weakness and place them at his mercy. In her opinion he would threaten exposure – he was shameless – or make an offer of a financial settlement. George agreed with her; from the start he had thought Chapman was actuated less by a desire for vengeance than a hope of gain. Mrs. Janney, thus backed up, became adamant. She would have no dealings with him, would run him to earth, and when he was caught, crush and ruin him.

Suzanne had listened to it all very silent and taking neither side. Her hunted air was set down to mental strain and she was allowed to remain an unconsulted spectator, treated by everybody with subdued gentleness. Back in the hotel, Mrs. Janney had suggested a doctor, but her querulous pleadings to be let alone had conquered, and the old people had gone for their afternoon drive, leaving her in the curtained quietness of the sitting room.

The door was hardly shut on them when she drew out of her belt a letter. She had found it in her room on her return from the office and had read it there before lunch. It was a prompter answer than she had dared to hope for.

"Mrs. Suzanne Price,

"Dear Madam:

"In answer to your ad. we would say that we are willing to deal through the agent you name. We take your word for it that he is to be trusted, that both you and he understand any attempt to betray us will be visited on your child.

"Remember Charley Ross!

"The sum necessary for her release will be thirty thousand dollars. On payment of this we will deliver her over at a time and place to be specified later. If you agree to our terms insert following ad. in the Daily Record. 'John – O. K. See you later. Mary.'

"(Signed) Clansmen."

On the second perusal of this ominous document Suzanne felt the strangling rush of dread, the breathless contraction of the heart, that had seized her when she first read it. Horrors had piled on horrors – as she had risen to each new step of her progress up this Via Dolorosa, another more fearful and unsurmountable had faced her. When she had spoken to Larkin of the money she had never thought of it, how much it might be, how she was to get it. Now, with a stunning impact, she was brought against the appalling fact that she had none of her own and did not dare ask her mother for any.

There was no use in lies; she had lied too much and too diversely to be believed. She would have to tell what it was for, and she knew the mood in which her mother would meet the demand. Money would be forthcoming – any amount – but Mrs. Janney, with her iron nerve and her implacable spirit, would never consent to a tame submission. Suzanne knew that her fortune and her energies would be spent in an effort to apprehend the criminals, and Suzanne had not the courage to take a chance. All she wanted was Bébita, back in her arms again, the fiends who had taken her could go free.

She sat down, pushing the damp hair from her forehead and trying to think. One fact stood out in the midst of her blind, confused suffering. She could not go to Larkin till she had the thirty thousand dollars. Every moment she sat there was a moment lost, a moment added to Bébita's term of imprisonment. She stared about the room, the gleam of her shifting eyes, the rise and fall of her breast, the only movements in her stone-still figure.

Suddenly, piercing her tense preoccupation with a buzzing note, came the sound of the telephone. It made her jump, then mechanically, hardly conscious of her action, she rose to answer it. A woman's voice, languidly nasal, came along the wire:

"Mr. Richard Ferguson is calling."

"Send him up," she gasped and fumbled back the receiver with a shaking hand. With the other she steadied herself against the wall; the room had swung for a moment, blurred before her vision. She closed her eyes and breathed out her relief in a moaning exhalation. It was like an answer to prayer, like the finger of God.

Of course Dick was the person – Dick who could always be trusted, who could always understand. He would give it and say nothing; she could make him. He was not like the others – he would sympathize, would agree with her, in trouble he was a rock to cling to. A broken series of answers to unput questions coursed through her head; she could go to Larkin now – she needn't tell him how she'd got it, he thought she was rich – after it was all over her mother would pay Dick back – in a few days she'd have Bébita, the kidnapers would have made their escape – and it would be all right, all right, all right!

Ferguson had come up, grim-visaged, steeled for battle, but when he saw her his fighting spirit died. There was nothing left of her but a blighted shadow, the cloud of golden hair crowning in gay mockery her drawn and haggard face. Before he could speak she made a clutch at his arm, drawing him into the room, babbling a broken greeting about wanting him, wanting his help. He put his hand on hers and felt it trembling; he would not have been surprised if she had dropped unconscious at his feet.

"Lord, Suzanne, you don't want to take it this way," he soothed, guiding her to the sofa. "You must get hold of yourself; you've been brooding too much. Of course I'll help you – anything I can do – and we'll get her back, it'll be only a few days." He didn't know what to say, he was so sorry for her.

She was past parleys and preliminaries, past coquetry and artifice. The whole of her had resolved itself into one raw longing, and before they were seated on the sofa, she had broken into her story. He didn't at first believe her, thought grief had unsettled her brain, but when she thrust the two letters into his hand all doubts left him.

He read them slowly, word by word, then turned upon her a face so charged and vitalized with a fierce interest that, had she been able to see beyond the circle of her own pain, she would have wondered. If he forgot to ask for Esther's hiding place it was because the larger matter of her vindication had swept all else from his mind. The proofs of her innocence were in his hands; he did not for a moment doubt their genuineness.

It was what he had thought from the first.

His manner changed from that of the sympathizing friend to one of stern authority. He shot questions at her, tabulating her answers, discarding cumbering detail, seizing on the important fact and separating it from the jumble of confused impressions and fancies that she poured out. A few inquiries set Larkin's position clear before him. The money he dismissed with a curt sentence; of course he would give it, she wasn't to think of that any more.

"Thank heaven you decided on me," he said. "I'll straighten this out for you and I'll do it quick."

She was ready to take fright at anything and his eagerness scared her.

"But you'll not do anything they don't want? You'll not tell the police or try to catch them?"

He had seen from the start that she was dominated by terror, as the kidnapers had intended she should be: and seeing this had recognized her as a negligible factor. To keep her quiet, soothe her fears, and employ her services just so far as they were helpful was what he had to do with her. What he had to do without her was shaping itself in his mind.

"You can rely on me. I won't make any breaks. And you have to be careful, not a word about me to this man Larkin. He must think the money is yours."

She assured him of her discretion and he felt he could trust her that far.

"Now listen," he said slowly and impressively as if he was speaking to a child, "we've both got to go very charily. A good deal of the threat-stuff in these letters is bluff, but also men who would undertake an enterprise of this kind are pretty tough customers and we don't want to take any risks. When I'm gone you drive over to Larkin's, tell him you have the money for the ransom, and to put in the ad. As soon as either you or he get an answer let me know. I'll be at Council Oaks; I'll go back there now. It's probable you're watched and if they saw me hanging about here they might think I was in the game and take fright. Do you understand?"

She nodded:

"Yes, you've put some courage into me. I was ready to die when you came in."

"Well, that's over now. What you've got to do is to follow my instructions, keep your nerve and have a little patience."

He smiled down at her as she sat, a huddled heap of finery, on the edge of the sofa. She tried to return the smile, a grimace of the lips that did not touch her somber eyes. No man, least of all Dick Ferguson, could have been angry with her.

"She was crazy," he said to himself as he walked down the hall. "They were all crazy and I guess they had enough to make them so. I'll get the child back, and when I do, I'll make them bite the dust before my girl."

Several people who knew him saw Dick Ferguson driving his black car down Fifth Avenue late that afternoon. He saw none of them, steering his way through the traffic, his eyes fixed on the vista in front. He stopped at Delmonico's for an early dinner, telling the waiter to bring him anything that was ready, then sat with frowning brows staring at his plate. Here again were people who knew him and wondered at his gloomy abstraction – not a bit like Ferguson, must have something on his mind.

Night was falling as he crossed the Queensborough bridge, a smoldering glow along the west glazing the surface of the river. When he left the straggling outskirts of Brooklyn and reached the open country the dark had come, deep and velvety, a few bright star points pricking through the cope of the sky. He lowered his speed, his glance roving ahead to the road and its edging grasses, startlingly clear under the radiance of his lamps.

Round him the country brooded in its rest, silence lying on the pale surface of fields, on the black indistinctness of trees. Here and there the lights of farms shone, caught and lost through shielding boughs, and the clustered sparklings of villages. The air was heavy with scents, the breath of clover knee-high in the grass, grain still giving off the warmth of the afternoon sun, and the delicate sweetness of the wild grape draped over the roadside trees. All this night loveliness in its fragrant quietness, its rich and penetrating beauty, reminded him of her. He looked up at the sky, and its calm and steadfast splendor came to him with a new meaning. She was related to it all, in tune with the eternal harmonies, part of everything that was stainless and noble and pure. And he would show the world that she was, clear her of every spot, place her where she would be as far from suspicion, as serenely above the meanness of her accusers, as the stars in the crystal depths of the sky.

When he reached Council Oaks he had a vision of her, belonging there, a piece of its life. He saw a future, when, coming back like this to its friendly doors, she would be waiting on the balcony to greet him. There was no one there now; the house was still, its lights shining across the pebbled drive. Obsessed by his thoughts, he jumped out, and leaving the car at the steps, entered. From the kitchen wing he could hear the servants' voices raised in cheerful clamor. Crossing the hall, he had a glimpse through the dining room door of the table, set and waiting for him, two lamps flanking his place. He had no mind for food and went upstairs, dreams still holding him. In his room he switched on the lights and his vacant glance, sweeping the bureau, brought up on the box with the crystal lid.

In his mind the robbery had faded into a background of inconsequential things. It had become a side issue, a thread in the tangled skein he had pledged himself to unravel. When Molly had told him of the evidence against Esther his interest had centered on the charge of kidnaping – the monstrous and unbelievable charge of which she almost stood convicted. Even now, as he looked at the box and remembered what he had hidden there, it came to his memory not as another weapon to be used in her defense, but as a souvenir of the moment when his present passion had flamed into life. A picture rose of that night, the silver moon spatterings, her hand, white in the white light, with the band on its third finger. He opened the box to take it out – it was not there.

He had seen it a few days before, was certain he had, shook up the contents, then overturned the box, strewing the studs and pins on the bureau. But it was fruitless – the band, crushed and flattened as he remembered it, was gone. He muttered an angry phrase, its loss came as a jar on the exaltation of his mood. Then a soft step on the staircase caught his ear, and looking up he saw Willitts' head rise into view. The man came down the passage and spoke with his customary quiet deference:

"I saw the car outside, sir, and knew you'd come back. Would you like dinner – the cook says she can have it ready in a minute?"

"No," Ferguson's voice was short, "I dined in town. Look here, I've lost something – " he pointed to the scattered jewelry – "I had a cigar band in that box and it's gone. Did you see it?"

Willitts looked at the box and shook his head:

"No, sir. A cigar band, a thing made of paper?" There was the faintest suggestion of surprise in his voice.

"Yes, you must have seen it. It was there a few days ago, underneath all that truck – I saw it myself."

The man again shook his head and, moving to the bureau, began to shift the toilet articles and look among them.

"I'm afraid I didn't see it, sir, or if I did I didn't notice. Maybe it's got strayed away somewhere."

He continued his search, Ferguson watching him with moody irritation:

"What the devil could have happened to it? I put it in there myself, put it in that particular place for safekeeping."

Willitts, feeling about the bureau with careful fingers, said:

"Was it of any value, sir?"

"Yes," Ferguson having little hope of finding it turned away and threw himself into a chair, "it was of great value. I wouldn't have lost it for anything. It was evidence – " he stopped, growling a smothered "Damn." He had said enough; he didn't want the servants chattering.

"I'm very sorry, sir, but it doesn't seem to be here. Perhaps the chambermaid threw it away, thinking it had got in the box by mistake."

"I daresay – it sounds likely. I wish the people in this house would let my room alone, control their mad desire for neatness and leave things where I put them. Have the car taken to the garage, I'm not coming down again. If any one calls up I'm out. Good-night."

"Good-night, sir," said Willitts, and softly withdrew.

CHAPTER XXIII – MOLLY'S STORY

After that Monday night when he went off in a rage, Ferguson didn't show up at Grasslands for several days and I had the place to myself and all the time I wanted. Believe me, I wanted a lot and made use of it. While the others were concentrating on the kidnaping – the big thing that had absorbed all their interest – I went back to the job I was engaged for, the robbery. And I went back with a fresh eye, the old idea cleared out of my head by Mrs. Price's confession.

She'd explained the light, the light by the safe at one-thirty. With that out of the way, I could get busy on the cigar band. I was just aching to do it, for, as I'd told Ferguson, it was an A1 starting point. Given that, there's nothing more exciting in the world than tracking up from it, following different leads, seeing if they'll dovetail, putting bits together like a picture puzzle.

So I started in and for two days collected data, ferreted into the movements of every person on the place, gossiped round in the village, picked up a bit here and a scrap there, and made notes at night in my room. I broke down Dixon's dignity and had a long talk with him; I got Ellen to show me how to knit a sweater and before I'd learnt had her inside out. I spent two hours and broke my best scissors spoiling the lock of the bookcase in my room and had Isaac up to try keys on it. When I was done I knew the movements of everybody in the house on the night of July seventh as if I'd personally conducted each one through that important and exciting evening.

It wasn't love of the work alone, or the feeling that I ought to earn my salary, that pushed me on. There was something else – I wanted to clear Esther Maitland. I wanted it bad. I kept thinking of her eyes looking at me when I gave her the drink of water and it made me sort of sick. In my thoughts I kept telling my husband about it, and I always tried to make out I'd acted very smart and some way or other I knew he wouldn't think so. It wasn't that I felt guilty – I'd done nothing but what I was hired for – but there's a meanness about beating a person down, there's a meanness about staring into their white, twisted face and saying, "Ha – Ha – you're cornered and I did it!" You have to be awfully good yourself to do that sort of thing.

Thursday morning I'd got all I could and with my notes and my fountain pen I went out on the side piazza by Miss Maitland's study; there was a table there and it was quiet and secluded. So I fixed everything convenient and set to work. Taking the cigar band as the central point I built up from it something like this:

It had been dropped by a man – so few women smoke cigars you could put that down as certain. It had been dropped between half-past eight when the storm stopped and half-past ten when Miss Maitland found it. The man could not be Mr. Janney who had driven both ways, nor Dixon or Isaac who had walked to the village by the road and come back the same route. It couldn't have been Otto the chauffeur as he had stayed at Ferguson's garage visiting there with Ferguson's men. The head gardener had gone to the movies with the other Grasslands servants, and the under gardeners had been in their own homes in the village as I had taken pains to find out. Therefore it was no man living on the place at that time.

But that it was some one who was familiar with the house and its interior workings was proved by two facts: – that the dogs, heard to start barking, had suddenly quieted down, and that a rose from Miss Maitland's dress had been found inside the safe.

An expert burglar could have got round all the rest, had a key to the front door, worked out the combination – the house was virtually empty for over two hours – it was known that the family and servants were out. But the most expert burglar in the world couldn't have controlled those dogs – Mrs. Price's Airdale was as savage to strangers as a wolf and had a bark on it like a steam calliope.

The rose figured as a proof this way: It had been put inside the safe to throw suspicion on Miss Maitland, the thief was aware that she knew the combination. This would argue that he was acquainted with the habits of the household. All social secretaries are not given the leeway Miss Maitland was; all social secretaries aren't given the combination of a safe where two hundred thousand dollars' worth of jewels are kept. The man knew she had it, and tried to fix the guilt on her. Where his plan slipped up was Mrs. Price coming later, finding the rose, salting it down in a piece of tissue paper, and, for some reason of her own, not saying a word about it.

How did he get the rose? As far as I could see there was just one way. Esther Maitland had spent part of the afternoon of July the seventh altering her evening dress. Ellen had pinned it up on her and she'd taken the waist down to her study to sew on as her room was too hot. When she'd gone upstairs again – it was Ellen who gave me all this – she'd left part of the trimming on the desk. The next morning the parlor maid had given it to Ellen – all cut and picked apart, some of the roses loose in a cardboard box – to put in Miss Maitland's room. It had lain on the desk all night and, in my opinion, the thief had either known it was there or found it, taken the rose, and made his "plant" with it.

Now one man who would be familiar to the dogs and might know Miss Maitland's privileges and habits, was Chapman Price. But it wasn't he, for at nine-thirty, the hour when the thief was busy, Mr. Price was crossing the Queensborough bridge, headed for New York. And anyway, if he hadn't been, you couldn't suspect him of trying to lay the blame on the girl who was his partner. No – Chapman Price was wiped off the map with all the rest of the Grasslands crowd.

When I'd got this far I sat biting my pen handle and sizing it up. A thief, professional, had taken the jewels. He was some one unknown, having no connection with Mr. Price or Miss Maitland. The two crimes that had nearly shaken the Janney family off its throne had been committed by different parties. I was as sure of that as that the sun would rise to-morrow.

After dinner that evening I went out on the balcony and sat there, turning it all over in my head, and looking at the woods, black-edged and solid against the night sky. It was very still, not a breath, and presently, off across the garden, I heard the gravel crunch under a foot, a soft padding on the grass, and then a long, lean figure came into the brightness that shot out across the drive from the hall behind me – Ferguson.

He dropped down on the top step, settled his back against one of the roof posts, and took out a cigarette case. He was right where the light shone on him, and I could see he had a serious, glum look which made me think he still "had a mad on me" as they say on the east side. That didn't trouble me; people getting mad when they've a reason to never does, and he'd reason enough, poor dear.

Puffing out a long shoot of smoke, he said:

"I've come over to speak to you about that idea of mine – that cigar band I told you about."

"Oh," I answered, "you've got round to that, have you?"

"I have, or perhaps you might say half way around."

"Well, I'm the whole way. I've spent three days getting there."

"I thought you'd beat me to it. What have you arrived at?"

"The certainty that the man who dropped the band was the thief."

"We're agreed at last. Have you gone far enough round to come to a suspect?"

"No, I'm stuck there."

He blew out a ring, watched it float away into the darkness and said:

"So am I. But I've a small, single compartment brain that can't accommodate more than one idea at a time. And it's busy just now in another direction. If you'll put that forty horse-power one of yours on this we ought to get round the whole way." He glanced sideways at me, his eyes full of meaning. "You'll find I can be a very grateful person."

"Gratitude's a kind of pay I like."

"Yes – it's stimulating and it can take more than one form." He flung away the cigarette, leaned back against the post and said: "The worst of it is that our main exhibit, the cigar band, is gone. I looked for it last night and found it was lost."

"Lost!" I sat up quick. He'd told me where he kept it and right off I thought it was funny. "Gone out of that box you had it in?"

"Yes. I wanted to see it when I came in – I'd been in town – and it wasn't in the box."

"Had it been there recently?"

"Um – I can't tell just how recently – perhaps a week ago."

"Did you ask about it?"

"Yes, I asked Willitts. He said he hadn't seen it."

"Didn't you tell me you kept studs and jewelry in that box?"

"I did; that's what it's for. I don't see how he could have helped seeing it. I daresay he did and, thinking it was of no use, threw it away and then, when he saw I wanted it, got scared and lied."

A thing like a zigzag of lightning went through me. It stabbed down from my head to my feet, giving my heart a whack as it passed. My voice sounded queer as I spoke:

"He could have known, couldn't he, of that walk you and Miss Maitland took, that walk when you found the band?"

He had been looking, dreamy and indifferent, out into the darkness. Now he turned to me, a little surprised, as if he was wondering at my questions:

"I suppose so. He knew all my crowd up there; they're forever running back and forth from one place to the other. They know everything, and they're the greatest gossips and snobs in the country. I've no doubt he heard it talked threadbare – the boss walking home with Mrs. Janney's secretary. Probably gave their social sensibilities a jolt."

Something lifted me out of my chair, carried me across the balcony, plunked me down beside him on a lower step. I craned up my head near to his and I'll never forget the expression of his face, sort of blank, as if he wasn't sure whether I'd gone crazy or was going to kiss him.

"Some one who knew the family, some one who knew it was out that night, some one who knew Miss Maitland had the combination, some one who could have got a key to the front door, some one the dogs were friendly with!"

He was staring at me as if he was hypnotized – getting a gleam of it but not the full light. I put my hands on his shoulders and gave them a shake.

"You simp, wake up. It's Willitts!"