“What if it had been accidentally dropped by the man talking to Virginia last night?” The idea was fraught with great possibilities.
“A clue! A sure clue, as I live,” and Sam’s enthusiasm soared with the recollection of seeing the man thrust his hand into the inside breast of his coat to show the knife, when it was quite possible the medal either became unfastened from its clasp, or being loose in his pocket, had been drawn out with the knife and slipped noiselessly to the ground.
Somehow Sam’s thoughts flew back to the night of his uncle’s reception, and connected the old Italian beggar loitering about the grounds with the medal.
“Was he the owner of the medal? And, if so, was he the same party that met Virginia, and whom he had followed last night?”
“Heavens! Could he have kidnapped Dorothy?” A train of thought had been started and rushed through Sam’s brain with prodigious alacrity.
“Was the twenty thousand dollars he had heard Virginia mention with surprise, a ransom?”
“If Virginia knew that Dorothy was in the hands of the Dago, why did she keep it secret? And what business had Beauchamp out on the Barnes road last night?” Sam derided the idea of him being out there alone, for a spin.
With these thoughts, and others, pregnant with momentous possibilities, he continued the search. Finding nothing more, he sprang onto the path that led to the tangle of vines. There was the very spot. No mistaking it. Along that fence he had crept in the darkness of night. Those the leaves he had touched with his hands, and he thrust his stout cane among them, but no hiss, or rattle, or glitter of something sinister, greeted his probing now.
Into the gloomy recess of the jungle he made his way, derisively fearless of any possible lurking danger.
He parted the overhanging foliage to let in more light. Ah, it was all plain now.