“You don’t think the lad has gone to join him, do you?” McCarty asked.
“Run away, you mean?” Mrs. Goddard shook her head slowly. “Oh, no! Horace would never dream of such a thing! Mr. Blaisdell wanted to take him but we would not hear of it and Horace had no idea of disobeying our wishes. He has never been away from us before—before yesterday!”
“Then you think he has been kidnapped?”
At the question Goddard, who had moved around to the other side of the couch, took a step forward, the sagging muscles of his round face tightening as his jaw tensed but his wife did not take her eyes from those of McCarty.
“He isn’t here!” her trembling voice broke. “He wouldn’t run away! The earth didn’t open and—and an avalanche descend upon him! It must have been that man!”
“What man!” McCarty and Dennis spoke in chorus, and then Goddard placed his hand on his wife’s shoulder.
“Now, Clara!” he admonished. “You promised—!”
“To give us facts, Mr. Goddard!” interrupted McCarty sternly. “If Mrs. Goddard can tell us whatever it was you were holding back last night so much the better! You ’phoned to me that the lad had been kidnapped but you couldn’t give me any reason for thinking so except that he was gone, and you didn’t breathe a word about any ‘man’!—Will you tell us, ma’am?”
“There’s nothing to tell!” Goddard insisted obstinately. “My wife is nervous, imaginative, and so is Horace. He was badly frightened by a strange man here in the Mall a short time ago and his mother was quite frantic about it. It was some days before she would allow him to go out alone again, but personally I think he exaggerated—”
“Our boy would not tell a falsehood!” Mrs. Goddard interrupted. “It was just at dusk one afternoon about a fortnight ago, or perhaps less, when Horace had returned alone from Mr. Blaisdell’s studio. He entered the Mall by the east gate as usual, but stopped to play with a little white Persian kitten, the pet of Mrs. Bellamy’s baby. Mrs. Bellamy lives just two doors away, next to Mr. Orbit’s. The watchman had passed him and gone on toward the west gate when all at once the kitten darted across the street and Horace followed, afraid that it might become lost. It ran into the open court between the Parsons house and the closed one next door belonging to the Quentin estate and Horace was stooping to coax it to him when he was seized from behind by a strange man and searched!”