Very respectfully, etc.
This much Alan slowly deciphered, and this gave the key to the unreadable signature. It was from the Chief of Police, evidently.
Alan reperused the letter, and slowly returned it to its envelope.
“This comes at the right moment,” he soliloquized. “If this Grip is what he is said to be, he may save me in more ways than one.”
And once more he summoned a servant, and gave these instructions:
“See that this room is thoroughly aired and set in order before three o’clock;” adding, as the servant was turning away: “Show a person who will call here after that hour, into this room, and then bring me his name.”
In the arrival of such a message, at that precise moment, there was, to Alan Warburton, no occasion for surprise. From the first he had communicated with the officers of the law by letter, or by quiet interviews held in his own apartments.
He was fully alive to the fact that, in dealing with the police, he was himself in momentary danger. But having resolved, from the beginning, to make his own safety and welfare secondary to that of little Daisy, he had been strengthened and confirmed in this resolve by his recent interview with Leslie. And now, in his dogged determination to find the Francoises, he vowed to sacrifice, if need be, his entire fortune, and accept any attendant danger, in prosecuting a vigorous search for these old wretches, and the missing child.
His brother’s illness and death had furnished him with a sufficient reason for living secluded, and for receiving such business callers as he chose to admit, in his own apartments. Only this morning he had dispatched a missive to police headquarters, desiring the Chief to secure the services of the best detectives at any cost, and to send to him for instructions or consultation, representing himself as confined to the house by slight indisposition.
He hated a falsehood, but, as he penned this fabrication, he had thrown the moral responsibility of the act upon the already heavily burdened shoulders of his sister-in-law.