Miss Jane Maitland had been missing for ten days. In that time not one word had come from her. The reporter from the Eagle had located her in a dozen places, and was growing thin and haggard following little old ladies along the street—and being sent about his business tartly when he tried to make inquiries.
Some things puzzled me more than ever in the light of Wardrop's story. For the third time I asked myself why Miss Letitia denied the loss of the pearls. There was nothing in what we had learned, either, to tell why Miss Jane had gone away—to ascribe a motive.
How she had gone, in view of Wardrop's story of the cab, was clear. She had gone by street-car, walking the three miles to Wynton alone at two o'clock in the morning, although she had never stirred around the house at night without a candle, and was privately known to sleep with a light when Miss Letitia went to bed first, and could not see it through the transom.
The theory I had formed seemed absurd at first, but as I thought it over, its probabilities grew on me. I took dinner at Bellwood and started for town almost immediately after.
Margery had gone to Miss Letitia's room, and Wardrop was pacing up and down the veranda, smoking. He looked dejected and anxious, and he welcomed my suggestion that he walk down to the station with me. As we went, a man emerged from the trees across and came slowly after us.
"You see, I am only nominally a free agent," he said morosely. "They'll poison me yet; I know too much."
We said little on the way to the train. Just before it came thundering along, however, he spoke again.
"I am going away, Knox. There isn't anything in this political game for me, and the law is too long. I have a chum in Mexico, and he wants me to go down there."
"Permanently?"
"Yes. There's nothing to hold me here now," he said.