Kirby could not get it out of his head that James was responsible for the disappearance of the girl.  Yet he could not find a motive that would justify so much trouble on his cousin’s part.

He was at a moving-picture house on Curtis Street with Rose when the explanation popped into his mind.  They were watching an old-fashioned melodrama in which the villain’s letter is laid at the door of the unfortunate hero.

Kirby leaned toward Rose in the darkness and whispered, “Let’s go.”

“Go where?” she wanted to know in surprise.  They had seated themselves not five minutes before.

“I’ve got a hunch.  Come.”

She rose, and on the way to the aisle brushed past several irritated ladies.  Not till they were standing on the sidewalk outside did he tell her what was on his mind.

“I want to see that note from my uncle you found in your sister’s desk,” he said.

She looked at him and laughed a little.  “You certainly want what you want when you want it!  Do your hunches often take you like that—­right out of a perfectly good show you’ve paid your money to see?”

“We’ve made a mistake.  It was seein’ that fellow in the play that put me wise.  Have you got the note with you?”

“No.  It’s at home.  If you like we’ll go and get it.”

They walked up to the Pioneers’ Monument and from there over to her boarding-place.

Kirby looked the little note over carefully.  “What a chump I was not to look at this before,” he said.  “My uncle never wrote it.”

“Never wrote it?”

“Not his writin’ a-tall.”

“Then whose is it?”

“I can make a darn good guess.  Can’t you?”

She looked at him, eyes dilated, on the verge of a discovery.  “You mean—?”

“I mean that J. C. might stand for at least two other men we know.”

“Your cousin James?”

“More likely Jack.”

His mind beat back to fugitive memories of Jack’s embarrassment when Esther’s name had been mentioned in connection with his uncle.  Swiftly his brain began to piece the bits of evidence he had not understood the meaning of before.

“Jack’s the man.  You may depend on it.  My uncle hadn’t anything to do with it.  We jumped at that conclusion too quick,” he went on.

“You think that she’s . . . with him?”

“No.  She’s likely out in the country or in some small town.  He’s havin’ her looked after.  Probably an attack of conscience.  Even if he’s selfish as the devil, he isn’t heartless.”

“If we could be sure she’s all right.  But we can’t.”  Rose turned on him a wistful face, twisted by emotion.  “I want to find her, Kirby.  I’m her sister.  She’s all I’ve got.  Can’t you do something?”

“I’ll try.”

She noticed the hardening of the lean jaw, the tightening of the muscles as the back teeth clenched.

“Don’t—­don’t do anything—­rash,” she begged.