“But,” spoke up Norah, “perhaps Mr. Gately went home. There is no positive assurance that he did not.”
Mr. Talcott looked at Norah keenly. He didn’t seem to regard her as an impertinent young person, but he took her suggestion seriously.
“That may be,” he agreed. “I think I will call up his residence.”
He did so, and I gathered from the remarks he made on the telephone that Amos Gately was not at his home, nor was his niece, Miss Olive Raynor, there.
Talcott made another call or two, and I finally learned that he had located Miss Raynor.
For, “Very well,” he said; “I shall hope to see you here in ten or fifteen minutes, then.”
He hung up the receiver,—he had used the instrument in Jenny’s room, and not the upset one on Mr. Gately’s desk,—and he vouchsafed:
“I think it is all right. Miss Raynor says she saw her uncle here this afternoon, shortly after luncheon, and he said he was about to leave the office for the day. She thinks he is at his club or on the way home. However, she is coming around here, as she is in the limousine, and fearing a storm, she wants to take Mr. Gately home.”
CHAPTER III
The Elevator
Mr. Talcott returned to the middle room and looked more carefully at the disturbed condition of things around and on Mr. Gately’s desk.