Keith, having watched her till she disappeared, walked on in deep reflection, hardly knowing what course to take. Presently his brow cleared. He turned and went rapidly back to the great office building where Wickersham had his offices on the first floor. He asked for Mr. Wickersham. A clerk came forward. Mr. Wickersham was not in town. No, he did not know when he would be back.
After a few more questions as to the possible time of his return, Keith left his card.
That evening Keith went to the address that Phrony had given him. It was a small lodging-house of, perhaps, the tenth rate. The dowdy woman in charge remembered a young woman such as he described. She was ill and rather crazy and had left several weeks before. She had no idea where she had gone. She did not know her name. Sometimes she called herself "Miss Tripper," sometimes "Mrs. Wickersham."
Keith took a cab and drove to the detective agency where Dave Dennison had his office. Keith told him why he had come, and Dave listened with tightened lips and eyes in which the flame burned deeper and deeper.
"I'll find her," he said.
Having set Dennison to work, Keith next directed his steps toward the commodious house to which the Rev. William H. Rimmon had succeeded, along with the fashionable church and the fashionable congregation which his uncle had left.
He was almost sure, from the name she had mentioned, that Mr. Rimmon had performed the ceremony. Rimmon had from time to time connected his name with matrimonial affairs which reflected little credit on him.
From the time Mr. Rimmon had found his flattery and patience rewarded, the pulpit from which Dr. Little had for years delivered a well-weighed, if a somewhat dry, spiritual pabulum had changed.
Mr. Rimmon knew his congregation too well to tax their patience with any such doctrinal sermons as his uncle had been given to. He treated his people instead to pleasant little discourses which were as much like Epictetus and Seneca as St. John or St. Paul.
Fifteen minutes was his limit,--eighteen at the outside,--weighed out like a ration. Doubtless, Mr. Rimmon had his own idea of doing good. His assistants worked hard in back streets and trod the dusty byways, succoring the small fry, while he stepped on velvet carpets and cast his net for the larger fish.