She bowed and murmured a tremulous greeting.  Kennedy placed a chair for her and she thanked him.

Mrs. Blackwell was a slender little woman in black, well past middle age.  Her face and dress spoke of years of economy, even of privation, but her manner was plainly that of a woman of gentle breeding and former luxury.  She was precisely of the type of decayed gentlewoman that one meets often in the city, especially at some of the middle-class boarding-houses.

Deeply as the disappearance of her daughter had affected her, Mrs. Blackwell was facing it bravely.  That was her nature.  One could imagine that only when Betty was actually found would this plucky little woman collapse.  Instinctively, one felt that she claimed his assistance in the unequal fight she was waging against the complexities of modern life for which she had been so ill prepared.

“I do hope you will be able to find my daughter,” she began, controlling her voice with an effort.  “Mr. Carton has been so kind, more than kind, I am sure, in getting your aid.  The police seem to be able to do nothing.  They make out reports, put me off, tell me they are making progress—­but they don’t find Betty.”

There was a tragic pathos in the way she said it.

“Betty was such a good girl, too,” she went on, her emotions rising.  “Oh, I was so proud of her when she got her position down in Wall Street, with the broker, Mr. Langhorne.”

“Tell Mr. Kennedy just what you told me of her disappearance,” put in Carton.

Again Mrs. Blackwell controlled her feelings.  “I don’t know much about it,” she faltered, “but last Saturday, when she left the office early, she said she was going to do some shopping on Fifth Avenue.  I know she went there, did shop a bit, then walked on the Avenue several blocks.  But after that there is no trace of her.”

“You have heard nothing, have no idea where she might have gone—­ even for a time?” queried Kennedy.

He asked it with a keen look at the face of Mrs. Blackwell.  I recalled one case where a girl had disappeared in which Kennedy had always asserted that if the family had been perfectly frank at the start much more might have been accomplished in unravelling the mystery.

There was evident sincerity in Mrs. Blackwell as she replied quickly, “Absolutely none.  Another girl from the office was with her part of the time, then left her to take the subway.  We don’t live far uptown.  It wouldn’t have taken Betty long to get home, even if she had walked, after that, through a crowded street, too.”

“Of course, she may have met a friend, may have gone somewhere with the friend,” put in Kennedy, as if trying out the remark to see what effect it might have.

“Where could she go?” asked Mrs. Blackwell in naive surprise, looking at him with a counterpart of the eyes we had seen in the picture.  “I hope you don’t think that Betty—–­”

The little widow was on the verge of tears again at the mere hint that her daughter might have had friends that were not all, perhaps, that they should be.