Indeed, it was not strange that Larry should be baffled. Even the detectives were all at sea. New York had been gone over as if with a fine tooth comb. Every quarter of the city had been searched, clew after clew had been followed up, suspicious characters by the score had been arrested, but still there was no trace of Lorenzo Androletti. He had disappeared as completely as if he had sunk below the surface of the earth, or as if he had gone up in a balloon.
Nor was there any trace of Parloti. The pieces of the torn note he had left behind after his flight furnished the only clew to him, and this clew was not sufficient to locate him. Nor were his tools—those two mysterious men—found, though a diligent search was made for them.
“Everything is up in the air,” complained Larry, as he thought over the various ends of the case. “I can’t get hold of anything to work on.”
Meanwhile Madame Androletti’s grief grew more keen each day that went by without tidings of her son. She lived in retirement, seeing only a few persons, of whom Larry was one.
He called often, not that he had good news to impart, but, somehow, hoping against hope, that perhaps, after all, the mother might be the first to hear good news. But there was no word from Lorenzo.
A number of private detectives had been engaged on the case, as well as the members of the regular police force, but they had not been as successful as had Larry. They spent large sums in traveling about, and Madame Androletti paid them gladly, but it amounted to nothing.
Occasionally they stumbled on what they thought was a clew, and there would be great hopes, but everything fizzled out, and they were forced to admit that they were mistaken.
Of all the New York papers, the Leader alone gave much space to the kidnapping case. And for this the sheet was laughed at, and made the butt of editorials by rivals.
“That’s all right, Larry,” said Mr. Emberg, when a particularly sarcastic editorial had appeared in the Scorcher. “They are only jealous because you’ve beaten them so much. Keep at it.”
“If I only could, Mr. Emberg! If only I could get hold of a new clew!”