Is Cristy safe? Wire immediately you receive this. McAllister anxious. Send Cristy back but remain there yourself till McCorquodale arrives. Important work for you there. McCorquodale will explain. Jimmy Stiles missing since day you left. Did you take him with you?
WADE.
"I should have sent a wire before this, I guess," admitted Kendrick slowly. "But I thought we'd be back before Wade returned to town. I didn't think to send it to McAllister. He's your—editor, isn't he? I'll get Thorlakson to send one of his men——"
She interrupted him with a gesture of impatience.
"The question is, Mr. Kendrick, what's happened to Jimmy Stiles?"
"Yes, and what's happened to make Wade send McCorquodale up here?
What's this important work he's talking about?"
"If Jimmy Stiles has disappeared, it hasn't been of his own free will. I'm sure of that, Mr. Kendrick,—positive!" She looked at him with anxious eyes.
"He was all right the day we had lunch together," mused Phil. "The wire says he's been missing since the day I left the city; so he must have gone that night. You know him a lot better than I do, of course; but from what you told me the other night he got away with fifty thousand dollars once before in pretty slick fashion."
"That suspicion does you no credit, Mr. Kendrick," said Cristy in quick resentment. "Jimmy hasn't absconded. He's been abducted!"
"You have a ready imagination," smiled Phil.