"It's pretty clear what has happened. They got Norman downstairs while Miss Norman and Mrs. Norman were at breakfast, put him in a taxi, drove to the hospital, and entered him under the name of Merriam. And Dr. Hobart has stayed in attendance."
"And he's still sick--perhaps worse," said Aunt Mary anxiously.
"Why did they enter him as Merriam?" asked Rockwell, thinking aloud. "It must mean that Crockett doesn't dare denounce us or doesn't wish to do so, that he means to make terms with us and preserve the secrecy of the whole affair. As I see it, there will have to be one more substitution"--he addressed the real owner of the name of Merriam,--"of you for Norman--at the hospital. You have reported yourself to your Riceville people as sick. Very well, you have gone to a hospital. From the hospital you return to your work. It will strengthen your alibi. And Norman will be restored to us--on Crockett's conditions, of course. But we shall escape the worst. We shall come off safe yet. But it must happen at once," he continued, with a note of new anxiety. "The whole State knows that Norman's speaking tour has been abandoned, that he came back to Chicago to-day, that he is in the City now. We must get hold of Crockett some way to-night. The final substitution must be made before morning."
Mr. Wayward was looking at his watch. "It's eleven o'clock now," he said. "But you'd better try telephoning. His clubs, I think."
"Yes," said Rockwell. "The Grill Club! That's where you found him, Simpson? He may have gone back there for the night. I'll try that first."
He went quickly to the telephone.
While Rockwell was looking up the number and the rest waiting in painful expectancy, the doorbell for the third time startled them.
"I'll go, sir," said Simpson.
In a moment he had opened the door.
On the threshold stood Crockett--a pale, hesitant, almost seedy Crockett, very different from the serene, confident, well-groomed financier whom Merriam had first encountered forty-eight hours before at Jennie's.