“Where is that trunk?  Where is that trunk?  Where is that trunk?” he repeated, tirelessly.  Could it be in some other rooming-house?  No.  If the girl had disappeared from such a place, leaving her trunk behind, the publicity would have uncovered the fact.  It might be lying in the baggage-room of some hotel, to be sure; but Paul doubted that, for the same reason.  The girl had been poor, too; it was unlikely that she would have gone to a high-priced hotel.  Well, he couldn’t examine all the baggage in all the cheap hotels of the city—­that was evident.  Somehow he could not picture that girl in a cheap hotel; she was too fine, too patrician.  No, it was more likely that she had left her trunk in some railroad station.  This was a long chance, but Paul took it.

The girl had come from Canada, therefore Anderson went to the Grand Trunk Railway depot and asked for the baggage-master.  There were other roads, but this seemed the most likely.

A raw-boned Irish baggage-man emerged from the confusion, and of a sudden Paul realized the necessity of even greater tact here than he had used with the Scotch girl, for he had no authority of any sort behind him by virtue of which he could demand so much as a favor.

“Are you a married man?” he inquired, abruptly.

“G’wan!  I thought ye wanted a baggage-man,” the big fellow replied.

“Don’t kid me; this is important.”

“Shure, I am, but I don’t want any accident insurance.  I took a chance and I’m game.”

“Have you any daughters?”

“Two of them.  But what’s it to ye?”

“Suppose one of them disappeared?”

The baggage-man seized Anderson by the shoulder; his eyes dilated; with a catch in his voice he cried: 

“Love o’ God, speak out!  What are ye drivin’ at?”

“Nothing has happened to your girls, but—­”

“Then what in hell—?”

“Wait!  I had to throw a little scare into you so you’d understand what I’m getting at.  Suppose one of your girls lay dead and unidentified in the morgue of a strange city and was about to be buried in the Potter’s Field.  You’d want to know about it, wouldn’t you?”

“Are ye daft?  Or has something really happened?  If not, it’s a damn fool question.  What d’ye want?”

“Listen!  You’d want her to have a decent burial, and you’d want her mother to know how she came to such a pass, wouldn’t you?”

The Irishman mopped his brow uncertainly.  “I would that.”

“Then listen some more.”  Paul told the man his story, freely, earnestly, but rapidly; he painted the picture of a shy, lonely girl, homeless, hopeless and despondent in a great city, then the picture of two old people waiting in some distant farmhouse, sick at heart and uncertain, seeing their daughter’s face in the firelight, hearing her sigh in the night wind.  He talked in homely words that left the baggage-man’s face grave, then he told how Burns, in a cruel jest, had sent a starving boy out to solve the mystery that had baffled the best detectives.  When he had finished his listener cried: