“Oh, pouf! I know it wasn’t you, Kelly, you could no more have engineered this letter than you could fly to the moon! And Hannah, I suppose was in her bed, too. I’ve no wish to question the servants,—they had nothing to do with it.”
“It was the kidnappers, then?” Zizi asked, softly.
“It was the kidnappers,” Wise said. “They,—or he,—came into this house by some secret way, which we have got to find. They, or their agent, came in night before last to steal that money from the safe. Foiled in that attempt, they have returned to their ransom scheme, hoping to get the money that way. They are desperate, and,—I don’t know, Mrs Varian but that we’d better——”
“Oh, Penny,” Zizi cried, “don’t throw away all that money——”
“What is that sum,—any sum,—in comparison with getting my child?” cried Minna, so excited as to be with difficulty warding off a hysterical attack.
“But you wouldn’t get her,” Zizi asserted, positively. “First, they’d never get the money,—thrown down in the darkness like that,—it’s too uncertain. And, if they did, they wouldn’t return Betty,—I know they wouldn’t.”
“Never mind that now, Zizi,” Wise spoke from deep preoccupation. “We have till Friday night to decide about it. Today is only Wednesday. What I hope to get at from this note is the identity of the kidnapper. I am sure it is the same man as the one who wrote that blackmail letter.”
“This is typewritten,” Granniss said, studying the letter. “And not signed in any way. I’ve heard, though, that typewriting is as easily distinguished or recognized as penwriting.”
“That’s true in a sense,” Wise told him. “I mean, if you suspect a certain person or machine, you can check up the peculiarities of the script, and prove the typing. But in this case, the letter was doubtless written on some public machine,—say in a hotel or business office, and even if found, would give no clue to the writer. We have to do with the cleverest mind I have ever been up against. That is positive. Now the reason I connect the kidnapper and the blackmailer is twofold. First, if this man’s blackmailing scheme proved unsuccessful, he may have struck at his victim in this more desperate way. And, second, there is a resemblance in the diction of the notes from the kidnappers and the note of blackmail intent, signed ‘Step’.”
“What do you suppose ‘Step’ means?” Granniss asked.