LITMIR.BIZ

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do you mean! Don’t you dare guy me, miss!”

      “I’m not,” and Jenny’s saucy face looked serious enough now. “But it was all so fearful sudden, and I was so struck all of a heap, that I just can’t say what was so and what wasn’t!”

      “That does seem to be your difficulty. You sit over there and think the matter over, while I talk to your sister.”

      Minny, a quiet, pretty girl, was as reticent as Jenny was voluble. But after all, she had little to tell. She had brought no one up in her elevator to see Mr. Gately beside Miss Raynor that she knew of except the man named Smith and Mrs. Driggs.

      “Did these people all go down in your car, too?”

      “I’m not sure. The cars were fairly crowded, and I know Miss Raynor did not, but I’m not so sure about the others.”

      Well, Minny’s evidence amounted to nothing, either, for though she told of several strangers who got on or off her car at various floors, she knew nothing about them, and they could not be traced.

      The three Boyds were quizzed a little more and then old Joe Boyd, the father, and Minny were allowed to go back to their respective posts, but the Chief held Jenny for further grilling. He had a hope, I felt sure, that he could get from her some hint of Mr. Gately’s personal affairs. He had heard of the hatpin, and though he hadn’t yet mentioned it definitely, I knew he was satisfied it was not Miss Raynor’s, and he meant to put Jenny through a mild sort of third degree.

      I was about to depart, for I knew I would not be invited to this session, and, too, I could learn the result later.

      Then an officer came in, and after a whispered word to Chief Martin they beckoned to me.

      “Do you know Amory Manning?” the Chief inquired.

      “I met him yesterday for the first time,” I replied, “but I have known of him before.”

      “Where does he live?”

      “Up around Gramercy Park somewhere, I think.”

      “That’s right, he does. Well, the man is missing.”

      “Missing! Why, I saw him last night,—that is, yesterday afternoon, and he was all right then.”

      “I’ve had men searching for him all the morning,” the Chief went on, “and he’s nowhere to be found. He wasn’t at his rooms at all last night.”

      I harked back. I had last seen Manning getting off the Third Avenue car at Twenty-second Street,—just where he would naturally get off to go to his home.

      I told this, and concluded, “he must have changed his mind, then, and gone somewhere else than to his rooms.”

      “Yes, it looks that way,” agreed the Chief. “But where did he go? That’s the question. He can’t be found.”

Chapter VI.

       Clews

       Table of Contents

      I didn’t reach my office until afternoon, and there I found Norah, in a brown study.

      She looked up with a smile as I came in.

      “I’m neglecting my work,” she said, with a glance at a pile of papers, “but that affair across the hall has taken hold of me and I can’t put it out of my mind.”

      “Nor can I. I feel as if I were deeply involved in it,—if not indeed, an accessory! But there are new developments. Mr. Manning is missing.”

      “Mr. Manning? What has he got to do with it?”

      “With the crime? Nothing. He didn’t come up here until Miss Raynor came, you know. But——”

      “Are they engaged?”

      “Not that I know of. I think not.”

      “Well, they will be, then. And don’t worry about Mr. Manning’s absence. He’ll not stay long away from Miss Raynor. Who is he, anyway? I mean what does he do?”

      “He’s a civil engineer and he lives in Gramercy Park. That’s the extent of my knowledge of him. I’ve seen him down in the bank once or twice since I’ve been here, and I like his looks. I hope, for Miss Raynor’s sake, he’ll turn up soon. She expected him to call on her last evening and he didn’t go there at all.”

      “I shouldn’t think he would! Why, it was a fearful night. I was going to the movies, but I couldn’t think of going out in that wild gale! But never mind Mr. Manning now, let’s talk about the Gately affair. I want to go over there and look around the office. Do you suppose they’d let me?”

      “Why, I expect so. Is anybody there now?”

      “Yes, a police detective,—that man, Hudson. You know they call him Foxy Jim Hudson, and I suppose he’s finding out a lot of stuff that isn’t so!”

      “You haven’t a very high opinion of our arms of the law.”

      “Oh, they’re all right,—but most detectives can’t see what’s right under their noses!”

      “Not omniscient Sherlocks, are they? And you think you could do a lot of smarty-cat deduction?”

      Norah didn’t resent my teasing, but her gray eyes were very earnest as she said, “I wish I could try. A woman was in that room yesterday afternoon; someone besides Miss Raynor and the old lady Driggs.”

      “How do you know?”

      “Take me over there and I’ll show you. They’ll let me in, with you to back me.”

      We went across and the officer made no objections to our entrance. In fact, he seemed rather glad of someone to talk to.

      “We’re sorta up against it,” he confessed. “Our suspicions are all running in one direction, and we don’t like it.”

      “You have a suspect, then?” I asked.

      “Hardly that, but we begin to think we know which way to look.”

      “Any clews around, to verify your suspicions?”

      “Lots of ’em. But take a squint yourself, Mr. Brice. You’re shrewd-witted, and—my old eyes ain’t what they used to was.”

      I took this mock humility for what it was worth,—nothing at all,—and I humored the foxy one by a properly flattering disclaimer.

      But I availed myself of his permission and tacitly assuming that it included Norah, we began a new scrutiny of the odds and ends on Mr. Gately’s desk, as well as other details about the rooms.

      Norah opened the drawer that Mr. Talcott had locked,—the key was now in it.

      “Where’s the checkbook?” she asked, casually.

      Hudson looked grave. “Mr. Pond’s got that,” he said; “Mr. Pond’s Mr. Gately’s lawyer, and he took all his accounts and such. But that check-book’s a clew. You see the last stub in it shows a check drawn to a woman——”

      “I said it was a woman!” exclaimed Norah.

      “Well, maybe,—maybe. Anyhow the check was drawn after the ones made out to Smith and the Driggs woman. So, the payee of that last check was in here later than the other two.”

      “Who was she?” was Norah’s not unnatural inquiry.

      But Hudson merely looked at her, with a slight smile that she should expect an answer to that question.

      “Oh, all right,” she retorted; “I see her hatpin is still here.”

      “If that there hatpin

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