A Strange Disappearance

I

A Novel Case

“Talking of sudden disappearances the one you mention of Hannah in that Leavenworth case of ours, is not the only remarkable one which has come under my direct notice. Indeed, I know of another that in some respects, at least, surpasses that in points of interest, and if you will promise not to inquire into the real names of the parties concerned, as the affair is a secret, I will relate you my experience regarding it.”

The speaker was Q, the rising young detective, universally acknowledged by us of the force as the most astute man for mysterious and unprecedented cases, then in the bureau, always and of course excepting Mr. Gryce; and such a statement from him could not but arouse our deepest curiosity. Drawing up, then, to the stove around which we were sitting in lazy enjoyment of one of those off-hours so dear to a detective’s heart, we gave with alacrity the required promise; and settling himself back with the satisfied air of a man who has a good story to tell that does not entirely lack certain points redounding to his own credit, he began:

I was one Sunday morning loitering at the ——— Precinct Station, when the door opened and a respectable-looking middle-aged woman came in, whose agitated air at once attracted my attention. Going up to her, I asked her what she wanted.

“A detective,” she replied, glancing cautiously about on the faces of the various men scattered through the room. “I don’t wish anything said about it, but a girl disappeared from our house last night, and”—she stopped here, her emotion seeming to choke her—“and I want someone to look her up,” she went on at last with the most intense emphasis.

“A girl? what kind of a girl; and what house do you mean when you say our house?”

She looked at me keenly before replying. “You are a young man,” said she; “isn’t there someone here more responsible than yourself that I can talk to?”

I shrugged my shoulders and beckoned to Mr. Gryce who was just then passing. She at once seemed to put confidence in him. Drawing him aside, she whispered a few low eager words which I could not hear. He listened nonchalantly for a moment but suddenly made a move which I knew indicated strong and surprised interest, though from his face—but you know what Gryce’s face is. I was about to walk off, convinced he had got hold of something he would prefer to manage himself, when the Superintendent came in.

“Where is Gryce?” asked he; “tell him I want him.”

Mr. Gryce heard him and hastened forward. As he passed me, he whispered, “Take a man and go with this woman; look into matters and send me word if you want me; I will be here for two hours.”

I did not need a second permission. Beckoning to Harris, I reapproached the woman. “Where do you come from,” said I, “I am to go back with you and investigate the affair it seems.”

“Did he say so?” she asked, pointing to Mr. Gryce who now stood with his back to us busily talking with the Superintendent.

I nodded, and she at once moved towards the door. “I come from No. — Second Avenue: Mr. Blake’s house,” she whispered, uttering a name so well known, I at once understood Mr. Gryce’s movement of sudden interest. “A girl—one who sewed for us—disappeared last night in a way to alarm us very much. She was taken 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—protégée, 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 didn’t 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.”