The girl in Horton’s watch case! Storm drew a sharp, quick breath and did not need Millard’s nudge to rivet his attention. The girl! He had not calculated upon her taking a possible hand in the game.
At a sign from Captain Nairn the stenographers had filed into the second of the inner offices, and to all appearance he and his client were alone.
“Who are you, my dear?” His fatherly tones showed no indication of change or added interest.
The girl hesitated again.
“I’m just a—a friend, but I felt that I had to come to you. If Jack has really disappeared, you know what terrible things will be said about him soon, since he had all that money in his possession. If he hasn’t returned to the colliery it is because something frightful must have happened to him. He must have been set upon by thieves; killed, or hurt and perhaps held prisoner somewhere! Oh, if you don’t find him——!”
“Your name, please?” A note of sternness crept into the Captain’s tones.
“I am Eugenia Saulsbury.” A little quick color came and went in the girl’s cheeks, but she held her head proudly erect.
“You reside here in New York?”
“No. I am visiting an old friend of my mother, Mrs. Van Alen on Madison Avenue, but I live with my father near Bethlehem in Pennsylvania. He will be annoyed, I am afraid, that I have courted publicity in coming to you like this, but he—he thought a great deal of Jack, and I know he will back up any investigation to find him to the limit of his resources.” She paused. “I—I have thought of hiring the best private detectives I could find—I wired Daddy so—but I felt that I simply had to come to you, too! I do not believe that Jack ever reached the city.”
“Why not, Miss Saulsbury?” The stern note quickened to imperative demand.