“She’s gone!” came in a muffled voice from behind the handkerchief.
“Gone—where?”
The agitated woman shook her head.
“No one knows. No one can tell! Oh, it’s a terrible thing, Mr. Merriwell!”
“Where is Mr. Staples?” questioned Frank, thinking he might succeed far better in obtaining the facts from the woman’s husband.
“That I don’t know. He is searching for her. He, too, has been gone several days. I heard from him once. He was then in Warner, away up in the mountains.”
Merry saw that he must learn the truth from the woman.
“Mrs. Staples,” he said, “please tell me everything in connection with this singular affair. It’s the only way that you can be of immediate assistance. You know I am quite in the dark, save for such information as I received from my brother’s telegram. It informed me that Felicia was in trouble and in danger. What sort of trouble or what sort of danger threatens her, I was not told. In order for me to do anything I must know the facts immediately.”
“It was nearly a month ago,” said Mrs. Staples, “that we first discovered anything was wrong. Felicia had not been very well for some time. She’s so frail and delicate! It has been my custom each night before retiring to look in upon her to see if she was comfortable and all right. One night, as I entered her room, light in hand, I was nearly frightened out of my senses to see a man standing near her bed. He saw me or heard me even before I saw him. Like a flash he whirled and sprang out of the window to the veranda roof, from which he easily escaped to the ground.
“I obtained barely a glimpse of him, and I was so frightened at the time that I could not tell how he looked. Felicia seemed to be sleeping soundly at the time, and didn’t awake until I gave a cry that aroused her and the whole house as well. I never had a thought then that the man meant her harm. She was so innocent and helpless it seemed no one would dream of harming her. I took him for a burglar who had entered the house by the way of her window. After that we took pains to have her window opened only a short space, and tightly locked in that position, so that it could not be opened further from the outside without smashing it and alarming some one. I was thankful we had escaped so easily, and my husband felt sure there would be no further cause for worry. He said that, having been frightened off in such a manner, the burglar was not liable to return.