The library was empty and in darkness, even the hearth fire having died, and a chill dampness pervaded the air. Betty switched on the lights and looked about her. The morning's correspondence was still heaped untouched upon the desk, but the rest of the room was in order save that a huge mass of fluffy charred fragments, as of burned paper, choked the chimney opening, smothering the logs beneath.
What could have been destroyed there in such quantities? The whole contents of desk and safe combined would not have produced such a mound of ashes. She took up the poker and stirred them about idly, her thoughts reverting to the strange manner of the young man in the hall, when all at once a scrap of paper fluttered from the rest which showed a gleam of white. It was part of the upper half of a news-sheet; the date of that morning was plainly visible at the top and just beneath it the fragment of a sentence in double heading type caught her eye:
"Police Find Promising Clue to B—
Looking For Girl With Scar—"
Betty dropped the paper as if it burned her.
CHAPTER XVI.
The Closing Net.
A light tapping, faint but insistent came to Betty's ears in the midst of her consternation and her hands dropped to her sides as she turned quickly from the hearth. The sound was brittle and crisp rather than metallic and seemed to come from the window which showed a square black void against the light of the room.
As she approached, however, a face appeared out of the surrounding gloom and flattened itself against the pane. It was that of a man, youthful and clean shaven, with a cap pulled low over his eyes, and as he perceived that he had succeeded in attracting her attention, he beckoned eagerly.
Betty hesitated but as he repeated the gesture with anxious impatience, she walked over to the window and opened it.
"Good evening, Miss. I had Demon out for a bit of a run just now and he got away from me. I whistled and whistled but he didn't come back and finally I found him out by the gate jumping all around a strange man. It was funny, for he's pretty fierce usually; you're the only one he's taken to that I can remember. Then I saw that the young fellow had a glove in his hand, that he was making Demon jump for; this glove, Miss. Is it yours?"