“Did you see a man?”
“No, sir, but I heard a scream from Miss Winifred, as though something had been held over her mouth. No, I didn’t see any one. By the time I got in here I saw no one.”
Kennedy had stepped over by the door and was examining the torn hangings, hastily trying to reconstruct what had happened.
“Apparently the intruder, whoever it was, seized her from behind,” he concluded, hastily, “wrapped the portières over her head, and jerked her backward. The rush of the abductor must have torn them from their fastenings. Besides, they were a good muffler for her cries. The kidnapper must have carried her off, with them wrapped about her head, to prevent her screams from being heard again.”
He leaped out on the roof and I quickly followed. “It would be quite possible,” he pointed out, approaching the far end, “at this point for any one to have gained entrance from the lower porch and to lift a girl like Winifred down from the roof to the ground.”
The slope of the land at this point was such that the second-floor level was not many feet above the ground level of the hillside.
I looked at Kennedy, at a loss to know what to do. Almost under our eyes, while every one was looking for something else, Winifred had been spirited off. Why—and by whom?
Craig turned to the night clerk, who had been among the first to arrive and had followed us out on the porch roof.
“Has any one any bloodhounds about here?” he asked, quickly.
“Yes, sir—in the cottage back of the hotel there is a dog-fancier. He has a couple.”