“Yes, Coley, he has!” Elsie cried out. “Kimball is upstairs,—I know he is! Oh, find him,—find him quick!”
The second policeman was now present, and he and Allison ran upstairs by leaps and bounds, leaving Coe and the other to attend to Whiting.
Elsie was quite herself again, hope and gladness having restored her like magic. She was for running after the man, but Coe said, “Wait, Elsie, they’ll soon be back,—you stay here,—” for he was all uncertain as to what the men might discover.
On the two rushed, finding no one in the rooms on the first or second floor. On, up to the third floor, and there, from a closed room they heard faint sounds.
Smashing the light door in, they found Kimball Webb.
Allison had never seen the man before, nor had the policeman, but they knew him from his photographs, and they gasped at his condition. Emaciated, pale, with a haunted look in his big, dark eyes, the man seemed half crazed. But at sight of them he revived instantly. “Police!” he cried, “oh, thank Heaven!” He mumbled unintelligibly, because of a diabolically clever gag which impeded his speech, while it allowed him to breathe and eat.
This was removed quickly, and the restored man, cried imploringly, “Elsie?”
“She’s all right,” said Allison, cheerily, and Webb smiled happily, then, immediately his face darkened and he said, “Whiting?”
“Safe in custody, sir,” the policeman assured him, staring as if he could scarce believe that the long lost man was really found.
“Let me at him!” and Webb’s look of righteous revenge was something so awful that the other two stared in awe.