“What do you propose to do? Put the screws on Goddard to find out why he kept that back? He can’t be a party to the kidnapping of his own son!”
“No, but he thinks he knows who the fellow was, and that he’ll hear from him or them back of him soon with a view to ransom; he’s ready to offer fifty or a hundred thousand reward, whenever you give the word. Until he does hear from him, though, he can’t be sure what happened to the lad and that’s why he’s anxious. His wife don’t know anything about this private opinion of his, of course, and naturally she’s half-crazed,” McCarty summed up as though his process of deduction was equally clear to his two companions. “We’ll leave him worry awhile, for ’tis my opinion he’s mistaken entirely. I want a look now inside that empty house next to the Parsons’ across the street and there’s no time to wait for red tape to get permission.”
“The Quentin house, that’s been closed all these years?” The inspector looked fixedly at him and Dennis gaped. “You think the fellow might have hidden there after letting the little boy go? Come on, we’ll take a chance.”
A huge dark blue limousine of impressive aspect was just drawing up before Number Seven as they emerged from the Goddard house and crossed the street. At sight of the distinguished, gray-bearded man who alighted and went up the steps the inspector halted with an exclamation.
“Do you know who that is, Mac? The ambassador to whom the mayor gave the keys of the city only yesterday down at City Hall! If he comes himself to call on the Parsons family they’re of more importance even than I thought!”
“And ’tis small wonder they don’t bother to associate with the rest on the block, millionaires or no,” McCarty commented, eyeing the equipage with vast respect as they passed. “You said the old gentleman was—?”
He paused suddenly and Dennis’ eyes followed his to the great entrance doors which were closing slowly behind the aristocratic back of the ambassador. There was just a glimpse of a thin, sallow-faced manservant in black, who appeared to sweep the trio with a curiously penetrating gaze and then the scene was shut out.
McCarty seemed to have lost interest in the question he was about to ask and they went on in silence to the narrow, paved court between the Parsons residence and the vast, rambling pile of brownstone next door.
“Let’s go up here and see if the rear is open for the length of the block, the way it is on the other side of the street,” McCarty suggested. “There’s Parsons’ side door, the one Horace said the man disappeared into; it’s pretty deep, you see, deep enough for him to have just stepped into the embrasure and been hid in the shadows of late afternoon without actually going through the door itself, though I don’t say he didn’t, at that!”
“’Tis likely a nut that’d go around grabbing children and searching their pockets would be let into the Parsons’!” Dennis exclaimed in fine scorn. “Unless the boy made the whole thing up for a sensation, the way some kids do, how’d the man get in and out of the block? The house on this side looks to be boarded up, as tight as a drum.”