A Strange Disappearance | Page 2

from her room--"
"Yes," she cried vehemently, seeing my look of sarcastic incredulity,
"taken from her room; she never went of her own accord; and she must
be found if I spend every dollar of the pittance I have laid up in the
bank against my old age."

Her manner was so intense, her tone so marked and her words so
vehement, I at once and naturally asked if the girl was a relative of hers
that she felt her abduction so keenly.
"No," she replied, "not a relative, but," she went on, looking every way
but in my face, "a very dear friend--a--a--protegee, I think they call it,
of mine; I--I--She must be found," she again reiterated.
We were by this time in the street.
"Nothing must be said about it," she now whispered, catching me by
the arm. "I told him so," nodding back to the building from which we
had just issued, "and he promised secrecy. It can be done without folks
knowing anything about it, can't it?"
"What?" I asked.
"Finding the girl."
"Well," said I, "we can tell you better about that when we know a few
more of the facts. What is the girl's name and what makes you think she
didn't go out of the house-door of her own accord?"
"Why, why, everything. She wasn't the person to do it; then the looks
of her room, and--They all got out of the window," she cried suddenly,
"and went away by the side gate into ------ Street."
"They? Who do you mean by they?"
"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