There was great excitement in Roma the following morning, when the people read in head-lines that occupied half or more of the first page of the morning paper,
THE MAYOR IS FOUND
Newspaper reporters had reached the Van Deusen residence before the two women did, and they did not leave until the story of their ten days' adventure (wonderfully simple from their point of view) had been told. The presses waited while the facts were properly embellished and each paper vied with the other to get the longest and most readable, if not the most startling story.
It seemed almost inconceivable that two prominent women could have been imprisoned in the center of the town and concealed for ten days—and yet it had been done; and now that they were restored to their friends—and the public—once more, that there should not be the slightest clue to the persons behind the plot.
"It is the most successful trick ever perpetrated," announced the Atlas, "and one no sane man would ever have admitted possible. The mayor has not seen a human being, except Miss Snow, nor heard any other human voice for ten days. No detective has yet found who sent her the message signed by Newton Fitzgerald, nor can they discover who was at the elevator to receive them when they mounted to their place of concealment, the regular incumbent having already proved an alibi. They met in the drug-store, but no one recognized or noticed them. The plot was carefully laid and successfully carried out, By whom, is at present, a mystery."
By nine o'clock the Mayor was at her desk, with Mary Snow in her office. Friends tried to deter her, on the plea of needed rest, but she only laughed at them.
"Rest? What else have I done but rest, for ten days past?" she asked.
"Worry, I should hope," answered her cousin Jessica. "I'm sure the rest are nearly worn out with worrying about you."
"I didn't worry—not so very much," said Gertrude. "I felt sure we were confined only to make me resign—or to give them a chance at the mayor's office, to get some nefarious contract through, or to secrete evidence in the street railway case, and I'm in a hurry to get down there and find out just what they have been doing."
"We felt sure our kidnapers wouldn't dare to do us any real harm," added Mary. "They've seen that we had plenty to eat and we have not suffered in any way. As Gertrude says, we've done nothing but rest."