“Now I’ve found my criminal and I can’t lay my hands on him. And something tells me I may never lay my eyes on him!”
He went to the Powells, for he must tell them that he had a hope at least of recovering Elsie before long. Yet, had he?
However, he told the Powells the whole story of what he had found in the way of a secret entrance.
“I should think it was secret!” Gerty exclaimed. “I don’t see how you were clever enough to find it!”
“I was stupid not to find it sooner,” Coe bewailed.
And then he told his further discoveries. Allison was present, and with the two Powell ladies made a most interested audience.
Mrs. Powell was in a nervous and broken down state, but she rallied perceptibly at Coe’s hints of good news.
“You see,” he told them, “Mrs. Seaman’s tip about the toothpick paper put me on a scent. I went to Courtney’s to see if I could trace anything, and by sheer luck, Miss Lloyd,—bless her! told me that Fenn Whiting frequently, or at least, occasionally, took her there.”
“Why, I thought Fenn looked higher than that!” sniffed Gerty.
“Some men look high and low by turns,” commented Joe.