ON THE SEARCH

It was late in the afternoon.  The Inspector’s office had hummed for hours with messages and reports, and the lull which had finally come seemed grateful to him.  With relaxed brow and a fresh cigar, he sat in quiet contemplation of the facts brought out by the afternoon’s inquiries.  He was on the point of dismissing even these from his mind, when the door opened and Gryce came in.

Instantly his responsibilities returned upon him in full force.  He did not wait for the expected report, but questioned the detective at once.

“You have been to the hotel,” he said, pointing out a chair into which the old man dropped with a sigh as eloquent of anxiety as of fatigue.  “What more did you learn there?”

“Very little.  No message has come; no persons called.  For them and for us these two women, Madame Duclos and Miss Willetts, are still an unknown quantity.  Their baggage, which arrived while I was there, supplied the only information I was able to obtain.”

“Their baggage!  But that should tell us everything.”

“It may if you think best to go through it.  It is not heavy—­a trunk for each, besides the one they brought with them from the steamer.  From the pasters to be seen on them, they have come from the Continental Hotel, Paris, by way of the Ritz, London.  At this latter place their stay was short.  This is proved by the fact that only the steamer-trunk is pasted with the Ritz label.  And this trunk was the one I found in their room at the Universal.  From it Miss Willetts had taken the dress she wore to the museum.  Her other clothes—­I mean those she wore on arriving—­lay in disorder on the bed and chairs.  I should say that they had been tossed about by a careless if not hasty hand, while the trunk——­”

“Well?”

“Stood open on the floor.”

“Stood open?”

“Yes, I went through it, of course.”

“And found nothing?”

“Nothing to help us to-day.  No letters—­no cards.  Some clothing—­some little trifles (bought in Paris, by the way) and one little book.”

“A name in it?”

“Yes—­Angeline; and one line of writing from some poem, I judge.  I put it back where I found it.  When we know more, it may help us to find her friends.”

“And is that all?”

“Almost, but not quite.  The young girl had a bag too.  It stood on a table——­”

“Well?”

“Empty.  Everything had been tumbled out—­turned upside down and the contents scattered.  I looked them carefully over.  Nothing, positively nothing, but what you would be likely to find in any young girl’s traveling-bag.  There’s but one conclusion to be drawn.”

“And what is that?”

“That all these things, such as they were, had been pushed hastily about after being emptied out on the table.  That was not the young girl’s work.”

“Madame Duclos’!”

“You’ve hit it.  She was in search of some one thing she wanted, and she took the quickest way of finding it.  And——­”