If only Peter were certain—­as certain as he was of her innocence—­that she wasn’t hidden in the house, he would let the detectives go quietly and get the truth out of Logan himself afterward.  But—­could he be certain?  Had he a right to take such chances when the girl’s safety might depend on police knowledge of her whereabouts?

It was reasonable to suppose that Logan had put her into the street after the giving of the alarm and before he ran to the club.  Yet he might not have done so.  She might be fainting, or even dead.  The most terrible, melodramatic things happened every day in New York.  One saw them in the papers and felt they could never come into one’s own life.  Supposing there were some hiding-place?

The fishlike flopping of Peter’s heart slowed down as if the fish were losing strength.  The thought was too hideous to finish.  Yet he would not dismiss it until he had played his hand in the game.

So far he had hardly spoken since the sight of the blue smoke wreath on the chair had set his brain whirling.  But when Logan suddenly challenged him to drink a health to the New York police, he took the glass of champagne Sims offered.

“Here’s to you!” he said.  “I never had such a good chance to appreciate the thoroughness of your methods!  By Jove! think of looking even under the table!  Now that would never have occurred to me.”

“I guess it would,” one of the men encouraged him, “if you had our experience.  It gets to be second nature to be thorough.  We never, so to speak, leave a stone unturned”

“Well, it’s mighty smart of you, that’s all I can say!” young Mr. Rolls went on.  “What do you call being thorough—­not ’leaving a stone unturned?’ Here, for instance how can you be sure you’ve looked in every hole and cranny where Mr. Logan might have stowed a young woman in a dead faint, if he wanted to fool you?”

Both men laughed.  “You ought to bin with us when we went on our trip around the house!”

“I wish I had!  It would have been a sort of experience,” said Peter.  “I sometimes read detective stories and wonder if they’re like the real thing.  When you were out of the room I was thinking if we’d had a girl hidden in here—­behind the curtains, for instance—­we might have sneaked her away when you were upstairs or down in the basement.”

They laughed again, patronizing the amateur.  “You must take us for Uncle Ezras from Wayback!” genially sneered he who claimed leadership.  “We didn’t ‘both’ go upstairs—­or in the basement.  While I waited in the hall my mate slipped down and locked the door that lets into the area and brought away the key on him.  What’s more, he did something to the keyhole—­a little secret we know—­that would have told us if any one had used another key while we were gone.  But no one did.  Good guard was kept, and if a mouse had tried to slip by we’d ‘a’ caught it.”

“But what if a mouse had tried to hide?” suggested Peter Rolls.