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Page 6
"Why, whoever they were who carried her off."
I could not suppress the "bah!" that rose to my lips. Mr. Gryce might
have been able to, but I am not Gryce.
"You don't believe," said she, "that she was carried off?"
"Well, no," said I, "not in the sense you mean."
She gave another nod back to the police station now a block or so
distant. "He did'nt seem to doubt it at all."
I laughed. "Did you tell him you thought she had been taken off in
this way?"
"Yes, and he said, 'Very likely.' And well he might, for I heard the
men talking in her room, and--"
"You heard men talking in her room--when?"
"O, it must have been as late as half-past twelve. I had been asleep
and the noise they made whispering, woke me."
"Wait," I said, "tell me where her room is, hers and yours."
"Hers is the third story back, mine the front one on the same floor."
"Who are you?" I now inquired. "What position do you occupy in Mr.
Blake's house?"
"I am the housekeeper."
Mr. Blake was a bachelor.
"And you were wakened last night by hearing whispering which seemed to
come from this girl's room."
"Yes, I at first thought it was the folks next door,--we often hear
them when they are unusually noisy,--but soon I became assured it
came from her room; and more astonished than I could say,--She is a
good girl," she broke in, suddenly looking at me with hotly indignant
eyes, "a--a--as good a girl as this whole city can show; don't you
dare, any of you, to hint at anything else o--"
"Come, come," I said soothingly, a little ashamed of my too
communicative face, "I haven't said anything, we will take it for
granted she is as good as gold, go on."
The woman wiped her forehead with a hand that trembled like a leaf.
"Where was I?" said she. "O, I heard voices and was surprised and got
up and went to her door. The noise I made unlocking my own must have
startled her, for all was perfectly quiet when I got there. I waited a
moment, then I turned the knob and called her: she did not reply and
I called again. Then she came to the door, but did not unlock it.
'What is it?' she asked. 'O,' said I, 'I thought I heard talking here
and I was frightened,' 'It must have been next door,' said she. I
begged pardon and went back to my room. There was no more noise, but
when in the morning we broke into her room and found her gone, the
window open and signs of distress and struggle around, I knew I had
not been mistaken; that there were men with her when I went to her
door, and that they had carried her off--"
This time I could not restrain myself.
"Did they drop her out of the window?" I inquired.
"O," said she, "we are building an extension, and there is a ladder
running up to the third floor, and it was by means of that they took
her."
"Indeed! she seems at least to have been a willing victim," I
remarked.
The woman clutched my arm with a grip like iron. "Don't you believe
it," gasped she, stopping me in the street where we were. "I tell you
if what I say is true, and these burglars or whatever they were, did
carry her off, it was an agony to her, an awful, awful thing that will
kill her if it has not done so already. You don't know what you are
talking about, you never saw her--"
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