XXIII

GIRLS, GIRLS!  NOTHING BUT GIRLS!

The superintendent was puzzled and showed it.  He listened to Mr. Gryce with a shrug, saying that so many women had been taken on that day, that he really couldn’t remember whether any one of them answered to the given description.

“There’s the time-keeper’s book.  Look it over.  All the names are there,” he said.

Mr. Gryce did as he advised, but of course without finding there the name of Antoinette Duclos or of anyone else of whom he had ever heard.

The next thing was for him to go through the factory itself and see if he could pick her out from those already at work.  This he was greatly averse to doing; it would be too long and painful an effort for him, and he could not trust Perry with any such piece of nice discrimination.  How he missed Sweetwater!  How tempted he was to send for him!  It was finally decided that when the hour came for the departure of the whole dayshift, he should take his stand where he could mark each employee as she filed out.

A sorry attempt followed by as sorry a failure!  He did not see one among them who was over twenty-five years of age.  But this did not mean the end of all hope.  There was the nightshift.  Might she not be put on that?  A different man had charge at night.  He would wait for this man’s appearance, present his cause to him and see what could be done.

Not much, he found, when the night superintendent finally entered the office and he had the chance of introducing himself.  Newer to authority than the superintendent of the dayshift, he was also of a more active temperament and much more self-assertive.  He was not impressed by the detective’s years or even by his errand.  It was a busy night, a very busy night—­new hands in every department.  To take him through the building at present was quite out of the question.  Perhaps later it might be done; but not now, not now.

With that the night superintendent bustled out.  This was not very encouraging, but Mr. Gryce did not despair.  He had seen with what ease he could look from the broad, rear window near which he stood, into the rooms where rows upon rows of girls were already at work.  Only a narrow court divided him from these girls, and as the three stories of which the factory was composed were all brilliantly lighted, he should have little difficulty in picking out from among them the middle-aged woman who held in her closed and mysterious hand the key to that formidable affair threatening the honor of one of New York’s most prominent men.

Before doing this, Mr. Gryce stopped to locate himself and recall if possible the entire plan of the building.  He was in what was called the outer office.  The inner one, used only by the president of the concern, opened on his left.  There was no one in the latter room at present, the president seldom showing up at night.  Another door led to the platform outside, and a third one, located in the middle of the right-hand partition, to a large vestibule or locker-room belonging exclusively to the girls, which in its turn communicated with the work-rooms of the factory running in unbroken continuity around a narrow central court.