A milk wagon was rumbling through the town as the doctor dismounted at the wide gate which led to Bobby’s stable, and a boy on a bicycle was wheeling from house to house along the street, throwing San Francisco papers of the previous afternoon into each yard. The morning of another day had come.
There was a light still burning, however, in the kitchen of the little flower-covered cottage. And soon Letty came hurrying out. “Have you had any rest?” she asked. “I’ve got some hot coffee ready for you.”
He gave a tender smile. “You’ll make a fine doctor’s wife!” he declared.
“Not if I worry, though. And I have worried—all night.” She tried to smile back at him, but her lips trembled. “Because I didn’t like the looks of the man that came here after you. Where was the case?”
“I’m afraid you’ll worry worse when I tell you,” he answered. “I don’t know where I’ve been.”
“You don’t know!”
Briefly, over a cup of steaming coffee in the kitchen, he related the happenings of the night just gone. Letty listened, wide-eyed and pale. “How do you figger it out?” he asked her as he concluded his story. “The Blue Top call was funny, but this was worse.”
The next moment she rose to her feet and let her cup and saucer fall with a clatter. “That’s who they are!” she cried. “Why didn’t I think of it before! The whole thing’s out at the mine.” Then she ran from the kitchen into the dining-room and came running back again, a newspaper in one hand. “Read it!” she bade in the wildest excitement. “Oh, read it!”
He took the paper from her. It was the local publication of the day before, and the article she indicated occupied the upper half of the front page. “Laurence Eastman Kidnapped,” read a line that reached from one side of the sheet to the other. Under this, in smaller type, was a subhead: “Outlaws Demand Five Thousand Dollars of Millionaire Father. Threaten to Kill Child if Theft is Made Public.”
The doctor read no further. “That’s what was the matter with Mrs. Eastman,” he said in a low voice. “The boy’s out in that cañon!”