. . . . . . .
Rather alarmed at the strange disappearance of Elaine after I brought her home, I had started out along the road to the shore to look for her, thinking that she might perhaps have returned there.
As I walked along a young tough—at least at the time I thought it was a young tough, so good was the disguise she had assumed and so well did she carry it off—slouched past me.
What such a character could be doing in the neighborhood I could not see. But he was so noticeably tough that I turned and looked. He kept his eyes averted as if afraid of being recognized.
"Great Caesar," I muttered to myself, "that's a roughneck. This place is sure getting to be a hang-out for gunmen."
I shrugged my shoulders and continued my walk. It was no business of mine. Finding no trace of Elaine, I returned to the house. Aunt Josephine was in the library, alone.
"Where's Elaine?" I asked anxiously.
"I don't know," she replied. "I don't think she's at home."
"Well, I can't find her anywhere," I frowned wandering out at a loss what to do, and thrusting my hands deep in my pockets as an aid to thought.
Somehow, I felt, I didn't seem to get on well as a detective without
Kennedy. Yet, so far, a kind providence seemed to have watched over us.
Was it because we were children—or—I rejected that alternative.