“Well then you have got to find him. I don’t trust you, Bill. You have lied to me before now.”
“Trust me or not—the kid’s gone and I reckon we’d best get busy finding him. I’d have started before now, but I thought you were playing me a trick.”
“He’s somewhere here in the hotel, I am sure. He’s always trying to make friends and I guess as soon as I had my back turned he was out of the room. I’ll settle things when I do find him.”
Inquiry at the desk for her “nephew” disclosed nothing. The clerk had been off duty. The elevator boy had seen no child coming or going. The chambermaid had no knowledge of the boy. The hotel was ransacked from basement to roof.
“I fancy you’d better get in touch with the police,” suggested the clerk. As that was the last thing Fitchet wished to do, she became angry at mention of the officers of the law and began to berate the management of the Hotel Haddon for their carelessness.
“Come, lady, we don’t run a nursery,” laughed the clerk. “You’d have been better off at the Alpha if you’d wanted a day nurse for the boy. We don’t make a specialty of kids.”
“I wonder if old Cheatham himself could have had the boy spirited away while I was off,” Miss Fitchet suggested to her brother. “He’s capable of it.”
“Of course! That’s exactly the ticket. I’ll wring his neck for him. He ain’t got any honor,” said Bill.
“We’ll take the night train for Louisville and give him what’s what. I reckon he’ll be expecting me to come to him with a tale of Philip’s being stolen and he’ll have some big lie ready. I’ll fool him. I won’t tell him the boy’s gone.”
While Fitchet was berating Cheatham to her brother, a messenger came with a letter for her. It was from her employer and confederate telling her he was taking the afternoon express for Louisville and would not see her again but that he would be back in Cincinnati in a few days.