Angelo called Florence. Half an hour had not passed before they were at the theatre. The police had also been notified. Three plain clothes men were there.
Between them they only succeeded in discovering that a side door was open and that Jeanne was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, gone.
When all hope of discovering the little French girl’s whereabouts deserted them, they left the place to the police, to spend a miserable hour before the fire in the studio. Without Jeanne, the place was dead. Without Jeanne—no one said it, but everyone thought it—the light opera, which had cost so much labor, and upon which so much happiness and success depended, was a thing of the past. Jeanne’s part was written for her. Not another person in all the world of stage people could play it.
“She’s gone!” Angelo rose and paced the floor.
“Kidnaped!” Dan Baker’s face looked gray and old.
“Do you really think so?” Florence looked the picture of despair.
“Not a doubt of it.”
“But why?”
“Ransom, perhaps.”
“Ransom!” The girl laughed. It was not a happy laugh. “Who’d pay it, you or I?” She went through the gesture of emptying her pockets.