“Amy is six years old, sir.”
“How long had you been with the woman when I joined you?”
“Not more than a couple of minutes.”
“What is your name?”
“Lucy Sloan. I am employed by Mr. John Madden, sir, who lives in the big marble house on the other side of the avenue. I have been there five years, sir, ever since Amy was a baby. Oh, what shall I do to find her? The master’s heart will break unless I can find her.”
The girl pointed to a palatial marble residence on the opposite side of Fifth Avenue, that of a millionaire banker and broker, whose operations in the stock market a dozen years before had given him not only vast wealth, but also a national reputation. He then had subsided, however, and during more recent years he had devoted only part of his time to business, though he still retained his interests in the firm of which he long had been the senior member, that of Madden, Mellen & Mack.
Though not acquainted with the other members of the firm, Nick long had been a personal friend of John Madden, having served him in several important financial cases. This fact, together with certain circumstances in the family history of the man, the nature of which will presently appear, not only caused Nick to regard the disappearance of the child more seriously, but also to take up the affair with increasing zest.
Turning to Lucy Sloan, who was a pretty girl in the twenties, and whose face was a voucher for her honesty, Nick said more earnestly:
“I am well acquainted with Mr. Madden. In fact, Lucy, I am the first person on whom he would call for aid in case his little girl is really lost. Tell me, now, just what occurred here that sent you to assist the woman who fainted.”
Lucy Sloan, however, could add but little to what she already had stated. She had been walking in the park about ten minutes before, the immediate locality then being otherwise deserted, when a boy about ten years old came running toward her, crying that a woman had fainted, at the same time pointing around the curve in the direction from which he had approached. It then was about four o’clock on a charming May afternoon.