This was a most unusual thing, for Fibsy, working with Stone, had proved absolutely reliable in the matter of obeying orders.
After waiting fifteen minutes, Stone telephoned to the boy’s home.
“Why,” responded “Aunt Becky,” “Fibs went out an hour ago. Somebody telephoned for him,—I don’t know who,—and he flew right off. No, it must have been important, for he went off without his dessert.”
Like a flash, it came to Stone that there was something wrong.
But what it was, even his cleverness failed to fathom. He telephoned the Trowbridge house, Judge Hoyt’s office, the courtroom, and any place he could think of where there was a chance of finding Fibsy, but all without success. Then, setting detectives in search of the missing boy, Stone went on with his own work of drawing in his widespread net.
And Fibsy?
The telephone message had said that he was to come at once to the corner of Broadway and Thirty-second Street, where Mr. Stone would meet him in a taxicab.
Fibsy grabbed his cap and sped to the appointed place. There he found a waiting cab, whose driver nodded, and said, “Hop in.”
Fibsy hopped in, and found inside a Japanese boy apparently about his own age.
“All light,” the Japanese observed, with a stolid countenance. “Mr. Stoan, he tell me bling you. All light.”