Rising quickly, she crept to the window and looked out. Going from the door down the utterly empty street she saw a man, a big swaggerer, with something of the over-seas and the adventurer in his air. It was Ralph “Voles,” the “brother” of Senator William Meiklejohn. But Winifred could not distinguish his features, or she might have recognized the man she had seen in her half-dreams, and who had said: “She must be taken out of New York—she is the image of her mother.”
Voles had hardly quitted the place before a street-car conductor, who had taken temporary lodgings the previous evening in a house opposite, hurried out into the coldness of the hour before dawn. He seemed pleased at the necessity of going to work thus early.
“Oh, boy!” he said softly. “I’m glad there’s somethin’ doin’ at last. I was getting that sleepy. I could hardly keep me eyes open!”
When Detective Clancy came to the Bureau a few hours later he found a memorandum to the effect that a Mr. Ralph V. Voles, of Chicago, stopping at a high-grade hotel in Fifth Avenue, had dined with Rachel Craik in a quiet restaurant, had parted from her, and met her again, evidently by appointment. The two had entered the house in One Hundred and Twelfth Street separately shortly before midnight, and Voles returned to his hotel at four o’clock in the morning.
Clancy shook his head waggishly.
“Who’d have thought it of you, Rachel?” he cackled. “And, now that I’ve seen you, what sort of weird specimen can Mr. Ralph V. Voles, of Chicago, be? I’ll look him up!”