“Dear Mr. Shirley: Just received a threatening note demanding money. Can you come up at once? Howard V. C.”
Shirley answered the question in the blue eyes, as she finished.
“As I thought it would turn out. Baffled in their game of robbing old men who have all left the city, they have begun to work the chance for blackmail. I will advise Van Cleft to pay them, and then we will follow the money. Here is the mansion and I will be out in five minutes.”
He soon disappeared behind the bronze door. True to his promise, in five minutes he had returned. He looked up and down the Avenue amazed. Not a trace of the taxicab, nor of Helene Marigold could be seen!
Shirley's impulse was to pinch himself to awaken from the chimera. He knew she was armed, and would use the weapon if only to call for help. For the first time in his career the chill of terror crept into his heart—not for himself, but an irresistible dread of some impending danger for this unfathomable woman who had shared his dangers so uncomplainingly during this last wonderful day. He racked his mind vainly for some plausible reason. “She knows I need her. Yet at the supreme moment of the game she disappears. Can she be like other women, when she is most necessary?”
And he walked slowly down the Avenue, disconcerted, endeavoring to solve this sudden abortion of his best laid plans.
CHAPTER XV. CONCERNING HELENE'S FINESSE
Shirley endured a miserable three hours, in his attempts to locate the girl. She had not returned to the Hotel California, and he returned to the club in moody reflection. It was beginning to snow, and the ground was soon covered with a thin coat of white, through which he noticed his footprints stenciled against the black of the wet pavement. He wasted a dozen matches in the freshening wind, as he tried to light a cigarette. He stepped into a doorway on the Avenue to avail himself of its shelter. As he turned out to the street again, he almost bumped into two men, wearing black caps! One of them grunted a curt apology, as he stepped on.
“They are after me as usual,” he thought. “Why not reverse operations and find out where they belong?”