For Mrs. Beresford’s clever employé in pursuing his search for Floy, had informed himself first of all as to whether the young girl had a lover.
He found out that Otho Maury had paid her marked attention, and while he pursued his search for Floy he kept a careful eye on her lover.
And his first suspicion that Otho might know the girl’s whereabouts was soon dissipated by finding out that Otho was as keenly on the alert as himself.
So the mystery deepened.
Neither lover nor detective could find one trace of bonny Floy after her flight from Bellevue that fateful twenty-first of May.
The detective went down to Mount Vernon and spent a week. He found out everything about the girl, save and except that St. George Beresford had been her accepted lover. That affair had been so brief that none guessed it save Otho and Maybelle.
Floyd Landon, the detective, intercepted Mrs. Banks in one of her visits to the cemetery, and in a casual way, introduced himself, hoping to find out something more. She was quite willing to talk on the beloved subject; but she could tell no more than the neighbors had told already—the story of Suicide Place, and the pretty child the kind carpenter had taken from her dead mother’s arms and brought to their humble cottage to be their own thereafter.
“And,” sobbed the broken-hearted widow, looking down with streaming eyes at the lonely grave, “we loved her just as dearly as if she had been our own flesh and blood, and if my poor John knew what she has come to now, I don’t believe he could rest in his grave.”
“It was very noble in you both to care for her as you did,” said Floyd Landon; and a minute later he asked, thoughtfully: “In case of her being proved dead, who will inherit Suicide Place?”
“I don’t know, sir—there are no relatives alive that I’m aware of. It seemed like Floy was the last of her line.”