“I don’t.”
Coe sighed and turned away.
He had so little to work on. That ridiculous toothpick paper,—Webb might easily have dropped that himself. Many a man would go to Sherman’s without the knowledge of his sweetheart, and think it no crime.
And the safe builder seemed to dwindle to even greater insignificance. For if he hadn’t built the secret entrance which had to be in existence, who had, and how was Coe to find him.
There was only one answer to it all. Coleman Coe was up against the necessity,—the actual bare necessity of finding that entrance for himself. No matter whether he could do it, or not, it had to be done, and he had to do it.
As he had previously argued, the finding of the secret didn’t prove the perpetrator of it, nor did it produce Kimball Webb,—but these things might result from the discovery of how he was taken away, and anyway, there was no other way to find out.
The master mind of the villain who took him was so clever, so diabolically canny, there was nothing to work on or to work with.
And, now, Elsie was gone,—there was added necessity for hasty action and result.
The motive, Coe had long ago decided, was the fortune. Just how that affected the case he wasn’t sure, but he felt an unshakable conviction that had it not been for the freak will left by Miss Elizabeth Powell there would have been no disappearance of either the bridegroom or the bride.
This naturally turned his mind to Joe Allison. But he had long ago ceased to suspect Joe. He had, at first, but now he knew the chap, and it was impossible to connect him with such a crime as abduction to gain a fortune. Allison was money-mad, that Coe admitted,—but, well, he wouldn’t put it on Joe till he had to.