The men knew one another well. They shook hands, then Cornelius Allendyce motioned him to a chair opposite him at the table.
The lawyer only needed to look at the other man's face to know that he brought no good news.
"Tom telephoned from Cornwall at six o'clock. Not a sign. Not so much as a red hair! Strangest thing I ever heard of. They're going to search the ravines today—easy enough for her to stumble into them if she was frightened or hurrying. Then there's the kidnapping possibility!"
"Improbable!" protested the lawyer.
"Well, nothing's improbable. You'd have said it wasn't to be thought of that a youngster like that would run off with that model. I want to give you the details of this whole matter—they'd be extremely interesting if one were not so concerned." He told of his two interviews with Adam Kraus and of Dale's invention. "A master contrivance. I can't understand your man, here, letting it get away from him. Why, it's worth a lot to me, but in these Mills—well, you may not know what I think of your mills," he laughed. "I'll tell you another time. The girl saw this Kraus go into my office, and persuaded my boy, who'd been taking her for a ride, to stop. She was waiting in my outer office and heard Kraus claim the invention as his own—scoundrel that he was—and when I took Kraus to see my head foreman, didn't she walk in, help herself to the model and leave me this." He drew an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Cornelius Allendyce. "Read it."
"This model is Dale Lynch's. I am taking it to him. When I see my guardian, I shall make him buy it for the Forsyth Mills.
Gordon Forsyth."
Cornelius Allendyce looked up from the bit of paper. He had suddenly recalled the frightened little girl he had first brought to Gray Manor.
"Who'd believe that the child had the nerve?"
"That's what I said. Well, she ran off with it, Kraus gave chase, Tom headed toward Cornwall, then switched off on an unimproved road and came to grief. Just as Kraus was about to overtake them the child ran off into the wood. Tom didn't have the vaguest idea what it was all about, but he tried to head off Kraus and when Kraus started for the wood he did a little wrestling trick that surprised the fellow, got him down, tied him in the Ford and went himself in search of Miss Gordon. When he came back after an hour's search he found Kraus and the Ford gone and he walked back to South Falls. That's all."