"The first thing I wanted to know was how I got on the steamer, but how to find that out without asking questions that the steamship people would think peculiar, was a puzzle to me. Finally, I decided to pretend to want to change my room, and when I went to the purser I asked him if that was the only room to be had.
"'Why no, Miss,' he said, 'but when you came on board and I told you what rooms I had, you insisted on taking that one.' That was enough for me. I realized then that I had come on board alone, and of my own volition, though I had not any recollection of having done so, and I knew no more of where I came from than you do now."
"How very strange!" murmured Alice. "And what did you do?"
"Well, I pretended that I had been tired and had not made a wise choice of a room, and asked the purser to give me another.
"'I thought, when you picked it out, you wouldn't like that one,' he said to me, 'but you looked like a young lady who was used to having her own way, so I did not interfere.'
"That was another bit of information. Evidently, I looked prosperous, a fact that was borne out when I examined my purse. I had a considerable sum in it, and the large valise I found in my room was filled with expensive clothes and fittings. Yet where I had obtained it or my money or my clothes I could not tell for the life of me. All I knew was that I was there on board the ship."
"And did you change your stateroom?" asked Ruth.
"Yes; the purser gave me another one. And then I sat down and tried to puzzle it out. Why was I going to Cleveland? I knew no one there, and yet I had bought a ticket to that port—or some one had bought it for me."
"Did that occur to you?" asked Alice. "That some one might have had an object in getting you out of the way."
"Well, if they had, they took a very public and expensive method of doing it," Estelle said. "I was on one of the best boats on Lake Erie, and I had plenty of money."