"Have you tried the dressmaker's?" I asked.
"Arrived ten, left ten-forty," said Rawnsley.
"Are any of her friends ill?" I asked. "Is she likely to have been called away suddenly?"
"Oh, I know why she's disappeared," Rawnsley answered. "This letter makes that quite plain. I want to find where it took place—with a view to tracing her."
He threw me over a typewritten letter, with the words, "Received by first delivery to-day, posted in the late fee box of the South-Western District Office at Victoria."
The letter, so far as I remember it, ran as follows:
"Dear Sir,
"This is to inform you that your daughter is well and in safe keeping, but that she is being held as a hostage pending the satisfactory settlement of the Suffrage Question. As you are aware, Sir George Marklake has secured second place in the ballot for Private Member's Bills. Your daughter will be permitted to communicate with you by post, subject to reasonable censorship; on the day when you promise special facilities and Government support for the Marklake Bill, and again at the end of the Report Stage and Third Reading. The same privilege will be accorded at the end of each stage in the House of Lords, and she will be restored to you on the day following that on which the Bill receives the Royal Assent.
"You will hardly need to be reminded that the Marklake Bill is to be taken on the first Private Member's night after the Recess. Should you fail to give the assurances we require, it will be necessary for us to take such further steps as may seem best calculated to secure the settlement we desire."
It took me some minutes to digest the letter before I was in a condition to offer even the most perfunctory condolence. Now that the blow had been struck, I found myself wondering why it had never been attempted before.