CHAPTER IX
GERTY’S PLEA
But Elsie’s determination to get a special detective was not easily carried out. She visited several who were recommended to her by agencies, but none seemed sufficiently sure of success to make her willing to pay the large fees they demanded, irrespective of the outcome of their efforts.
In fact none seemed anxious to take up the case. They deemed it too difficult to locate the missing man, for they held the opinion, that he had been hidden with his own consent or at his own request.
One detective told Elsie plainly, that he had learned that Mr. Webb was entirely amenable to the advices of his mother and sister, and that as they so thoroughly disapproved of the marriage he contemplated, he had at last agreed to their views and had vanished the day of the projected wedding. He politely expressed his personal surprise at this state of things, and with an admiring glance at his would-be client, implied that, for his part, he didn’t see how Mr. Webb could have chosen more happily.
Disgusted at his impertinence, Elsie left him, and after a few more trials to find a detective who would take a real interest, aside from his financial reward, she gave up in despair.
“I thought it would be an easy matter to get a detective like they have in the stories,” she said to Gerty; “but they’re most of them stupid and indifferent.”
“Give up the idea that you’ll ever see Kimball again,” Gerty urged, “that is, before your birthday. There’s not the slightest doubt that Henrietta is at the bottom of the whole affair. Nobody else could be. Nobody from outside could get into the house and get Kim away. Henrietta could, of course, and then all the mysteries are explainable.”
“Explainable, how?”
“Why, after he left the house,—to go wherever they planned for him to go,—Henrietta could lock the street door for him.”
“And his room door,—locked from the inside?”