“A-a-ah!” Mrs. Goddard’s taut nerves gave way and she broke into a low, wailing cry. “That is my fear! No sane person would harm him; but all night long in horrible dreams I have seen him—! My baby! He is hidden somewhere, helpless, suffering, and I cannot reach him! I shall go mad!”
CHAPTER XI
THE CLOSED HOUSE
“A fine mess you made of that!” McCarty remarked disgustedly when the door of Mrs. Goddard’s dressing-room had closed behind them, shutting in her husband and the maid. “Just when we were on the point of getting at the truth, too!”
“Truth, is it?” Dennis retorted. “I suppose you mean you’d have been finding out what the crazy guy expected to find in the boy’s pockets!”
“No, I know that already!” McCarty emitted a grim chuckle. “’Twill keep, though, for we’ve got quick work ahead of us now and the inspector must have been waiting this long while.”
“You can shoot yourself down in that birdcage if you’ve a mind to, but my own legs will carry me!” Dennis eyed the elevator door, cunningly concealed in the high oak paneling of the hall, with a hostile glare. Then he added sarcastically: “I’ve no doubt but that, by the new book learning you’ve got lately, you know who the guy was, too, and where he came from and how he got out, through solid walls and barred gates! Education is a grand thing, but where is Horace? Answer me that!”
“If we’re not able to answer that soon, Denny, I’m thinking it would be best left unanswered forever, for the sake of that woman back there.” McCarty spoke with deep earnestness. “There’s a feeling in me that we’ve something working against us more than human, something worse than lightning or the plague, even! If we could only see our way clear to the black heart of it!”
They went down the stairs together, to find the inspector and Martin awaiting them with Trafford, who appeared crushed from the gruelling half hour through which he had passed.
McCarty addressed him first, with a mere nod to his superior.
“Trafford, why didn’t you tell me about the man who grabbed the lad in the alley not two weeks ago?”