“He avoids you; he avoids me. He is seen going into Keatcham’s drawing-room; that means some sort of an acquaintance with Keatcham, enough to talk to him, anyway. How much, I can’t say. Then comes the attack by the robbers; he is in another car, so there is no call for him to do anything; there is no light whatever on whether he had anything to do with the robbery.
“Then we come here. Keatcham has the room next but one. Archie goes into his own room; we see him go; I am outside, directly outside; it is simply impossible for him to go out into the hall without my seeing him; besides, I found the doors outside all locked except the one to the right where we entered your suite; then we may assume that he could not go out. He could not climb out of locked windows on the third floor down a sheer descent of some forty or fifty feet. Your last room to the right, Miss Smith’s bedroom, is a corner room; besides, she was in it; that excludes every exit except that to the left. We find Mrs. Wigglesworth was absent, and there were evidences of—an—an attack of some kind carefully hidden, afterward. But there is no sign of the boy. I watch the rooms. If he is hidden somewhere in Keatcham’s rooms, the chances are, after Keatcham goes, they will try to take him off. I don’t think it probable that Keatcham knows anything about the kidnapping; in fact, it is wildly improbable. Well, Keatcham goes; immediately I get into the room. The valet and the young man visiting Keatcham, young Arnold, let me in without the slightest demur. Either they know nothing of the boy or somehow they have got him away, else they would not let me in so easily. Maybe they are ignorant and the boy is gone, both. We go to the rooms very soon after; there is not the smallest trace of Archie.”
“How did he get out?”
“They must have outwitted me, somehow,” the colonel sighed, “and it looks as if he went voluntarily; there was no possible carrying away by force. And there was no odor of chloroform about; that is very penetrating; it would get into the halls. They must have persuaded him to go—but how?”
“If they have kidnapped him,” said Mrs. Winter, “they will send me some word, and if they have persuaded him to run away, plainly he must be able to walk, and that—mess in Mrs. Wigglesworth’s room doesn’t mean anything bad.”
“Of course not,” said the colonel firmly.
Then, in as casual a tone as he could command: “By the way, where is Miss Smith? She is back, isn’t she?”
“Oh, a long time ago,” said Mrs. Winter. “I sent her to bed.”
“I’ve been frank with you. You will reciprocate and tell me why, for what, you sent her out?”
Mrs. Winter made not the least evasion. She answered frankly: “I sent her with a carefully worded advertisement—but you needn’t tell Millicent, who has also gone to bed, thank Heaven—I sent her with a carefully worded advertisement to all the papers. This is the advertisement. It will reach the kidnappers, and it will not reach any one else. See.” She handed him a slip of paper from her card-case. He read: