“Do you see what it says?” went on Leslie, excitedly. “‘Honorable Arthur Ramsay, Hotel des Wagons-Lits, Peking’. Why, Phyllis, that’s his name (which you couldn’t remember!) and he was evidently at some time in Peking!”
But Phyllis was puckering her brows in an effort of memory. “There’s some mistake here, I guess,” she remarked at length, “for now I recall that Mrs. Danforth said his name was Mr. Horatio Gaines!”
Leslie dropped the envelop back in the book, the picture of disappointment. “It doesn’t seem likely he’d have someone else’s envelops in his books,” she remarked. “And I think Honorable Arthur Ramsay of Peking sounds far more thrilling than plain ‘Horatio Gaines’! Let’s look through the rest of the books and see if we can discover anything else.”
They examined them all, but found nothing more of interest and Leslie suggested uneasily that they had better go.
“But there’s one thing I must see first,—” decided Phyllis; “the beads and broken penknife you found. I’ve been wild to look at them for myself. Come along! We’ll have time for that.”
They made their way cautiously into the next bedroom, bent down, and turned the torch toward the floor under the bureau where Leslie had made the discovery. Then both girls simultaneously gasped. There was not a sign of the beads anywhere to be seen!
“Phyllis!” breathed Leslie, in frightened wonder. “It’s gone—the whole string! What can be the meaning of it?”
“Come!” cried Phyllis, dragging Leslie after her. “Let’s go and see if the broken penknife blade is there yet. If that’s gone, too, something new has happened here!”
They hurried to the living-room and bent over the fireplace. The half-loosened brick was there as Leslie had described it, but of the broken penknife blade in the corner, there was not a vestige to be seen!