Then Reuther told her story.

“Mr. Ostrander and I were talking very seriously one day.  It was before we became definitely engaged, and he seemed to feel very dispirited and uncertain of the future.  There was a treatise he wanted to write, and for this he could get no opportunity in Detroit.  ‘I need time,’ he said, ‘and complete seclusion.’  And then he made this remark:  ’If ever life becomes too much for me, I shall go to one of two places and give myself up to this task.’  ‘And what are the places?’ I asked.  ‘One is Washington,’ he answered, ’where I can have the run of a great library and the influence of the most inspiring surroundings in the world; the other is a little lodge in a mountain top above Lake Placid—­ Tempest Lodge, they call it; perhaps, in contrast to the peacefulness it dominates.’  And he described this last place with so much enthusiasm and weighed so carefully the advantages of the one spot against the other for the absorbing piece of work that he contemplated, that I am sure that if we do not find him in Washington, we certainly shall in the Adirondacks.”

“Let us hope that it will be in Washington,” replied the lawyer, with a keen remembrance of the rigours of an Adirondack fall—­ rigours of which Reuther in her enthusiasm, if not in her ignorance, appeared to take little count.  “And now,” he went on, “this is how I hope to proceed.  We will go first to Washington, and, if unsuccessful there, to Tempest Lodge.  We will take Miss Weeks with us, for I am sure that I could not, without some such assistance, do justice to this young lady’s comfort.  If you have a picture of Mr. Ostrander as he looks now, I hope you will take it, Miss Scoville.  With that and the clew to his intentions, which you have given me, I have no doubt that we shall find him within the week.”

“But,” objected Deborah, “if you know where to look for him, why take the child?  Why go yourself?  Why not telegraph to these places?”

His answer was a look, quick, sharp and enigmatical enough to require explanation.  He could not give it to her then, but later, when Reuther had left them, he said: 

“Men who fly their engagements and secrete themselves, with or without a pretext, are not so easily reached.  We shall have to surprise Oliver Ostrander, in order to place his father’s message in his hands.”

“You may be right.  But Reuther?  Can she stand the excitement—­the physical strain?”

“You have the harder task of the two, Mrs. Scoville.  Leave the little one to me.  She shall not suffer.”

Deborah’s response was eloquent.  It was only a look, but it made his harsh features glow and his hard eye soften.  Alanson Black had waited long, but his day of romance had come—­and possibly hers also.

But his thoughts, if not his hopes, received a check when, with every plan made and Miss Weeks, as well as Reuther, in trembling anticipation of the journey, he encountered the triumphant figure of Flannagan coming out of Police Headquarters.