“When you called up to the glass-room through the speaking-tube, to say that the boy was about to go up, who answered you—Loti?”
“Yes.”
“At what time was that? Or can’t you say positively?”
“Not to the fraction of a moment. But I should say that it was about four or five minutes before the boy got there—say about five-and-twenty minutes past four. It wouldn’t take him longer to get up to the top of the house, I fancy, and he certainly did not stop at any of the other departments on the way.”
“Queer, isn’t it, that the man should not have stopped to so much as welcome the boy after you had been at such pains to tell him to be nice to him? Does he offer any explanation on that score?”
“Yes. He says that, as his head was so bad, he knew that he would probably be cross and crotchety; so as I had asked him to be kind, he thought the best thing he could do was to leave a note on the table for the boy, telling him to make himself at home and to examine anything he pleased, but to be sure not to touch the cauldron in which the wax was simmering, as it tilted readily and he might get scalded. He was sorry to have to go, but his head ached so badly that he really had to lie down for a while.
“That note, I may tell you, was lying on the table when I went up to the glass-room and failed to find the boy. It was that which told me where to go in order to find Loti and question him. I’ll do him the credit of stating that when he heard of the boy’s mysterious disappearance he flung his headache and his creature comforts to the winds and joined in the eager hunt for him as excitedly and as strenuously as anybody. He went through the building from top to bottom; he lifted every trapdoor, crept into every nook and corner and hole and box into which it might be possible for the poor little chap to have fallen. But it was all useless, Mr. Cleek—every bit of it! The boy had vanished, utterly and completely; from the minute the porter saw him pass the swing-door and go into the glass-room we never discovered even the slightest trace of him, nor have we been able to do so since. He has gone, he has vanished, as completely as if he had melted into thin air, and if there is any ghost of a clue to his whereabouts existing——”
“Let us go and see if we can unearth it,” interrupted Cleek, rising. “Mr. Narkom, is the limousine within easy reach?”
“Yes, waiting in Tavistock Street, dear chap. I told Lennard to be on the lookout for us.”
“Good! Then if Miss Larue will allow Mr. Trent to escort her as far as the pavement, and he will then go on alone to his place of business and await us there, you and I will leave the hotel by the back way and join him as soon as possible. Leave by the front entrance if you be so kind; and—pardon, one last word, Mr. Trent, before you go. At the time when this boy’s father vanished in much the same way, eleven months ago, you had, I believe, a door porter at your establishment name Felix Murchison. Is that man still in your employ?”