Carton came to the rescue.  “Miss Blackwell,” he interposed, “was a very attractive girl, very.  She had hosts of admirers, as every attractive girl must have.  Most of them, all of them, as far as Mrs. Blackwell knows and I have been able to find out, were young men at the office where she worked, or friends of that sort—­not the ordinary clerk, but of the rising, younger, self-made generation.  Still, they don’t seem to have interested her particularly as far as I have been able to discover.  She merely liked them.  There is absolutely nothing known to point to the fact that she was any different from thousands of girls in that respect.  She was vivacious, full of fun and life, a girl any fellow would have been more than proud to take to a dance.  She was ambitious, I suppose, but nothing more.”

“Betty was not a bad girl,” asserted Mrs. Blackwell vehemently.  “She was a good girl.  I don’t believe there was much, in fact anything important, on which she did not make me her confidante.  Yes, she was ambitious.  So am I. I have always hoped that Betty would bring our family—­her younger sister—­back to the station where we were before the panic wiped out our fortune and killed my husband.  That is all.”

“Yes,” added Carton, “nothing at all is known that would make one think that she was what young men call a ‘good fellow’ with them.”

Kennedy looked up, but said nothing.  I thought I could read the unspoken word on his lips, as he glanced from Carton to Mrs. Blackwell, “known.”

She had risen and was facing us.

“Is there no one in all this great city,” appealed the distracted little woman with outstretched arms, “who can find my daughter?  Is it possible that a girl can disappear in broad daylight in the streets and never be heard of again?  Oh, won’t you find her?  Tell me she is safe—­that she is still the little girl I—–­”

Her voice failed and she was crying softly in her lace handkerchief.  It was touching and I saw that Kennedy was deeply moved, although at once to his practical mind the thought must have occurred that nothing was to be gained by further questions of Mrs. Blackwell.

“Believe me, Mrs. Blackwell,” he said in a low tone, taking her hand, “I will do all that is in my power to find her.”

“Thank you,” murmured the mother, overcome.

A moment later, however, she had recovered her composure to some degree and rose to go.  There was a flattering look of relief on her face which in itself must have been ample reward to Craig, a retainer worth more to him in a case like this than money.

“I’m going back to my office,” remarked Carton.  “If I learn anything, I shall let you know.”

The District Attorney went out with Mrs. Blackwell.  Busy as he was, he had time to turn aside to help this bereaved woman, and I admired him for it.

“Do you think it is one of those cases like some that Carton has uncovered on the East Side and among girls newly arrived in the city?” I asked Craig when the door was shut.