"I don't know that we can catch them at all. We don't know how to get at them. We've no idea where they are."
His hands dropped from his face; it throbbed now and blazed; all the nerves had come to life in a quivering network. "Oh, for God's sake," he said, "don't tell me that!—Go on, then, go on! Tell me!" He looked beseechingly and then in a fury of impatience from face to face. "Don't stand gaping! You must know something! Look here, you don't understand! You don't know all I've been through all these weeks—wondering!—If she was in that lake where we used to row! If she'd only gone away, hating me! My mind's in pieces trying to think—think—following every sign! Hundreds of times I've seen her dead! And now you tell me she's alive! and calling—calling for help! Do you? Do you?"
"Yes," said Kane.
He swayed forward so suddenly that he had to catch at the table. "It's horrible! It's a nightmare!" With a strange monotonous inflection his voice rose higher and higher on the one strained note. "It's the thing I've dreamed of night and day, week out and in! That she was frightened and in danger! With brutes! With the faces of beasts round her! Oh, God—!"
"Don't!" Herrick cried.
"Yes, but look here!" With an eagerness sudden as a child's, he said to Herrick, "But it's hope! Hope, isn't it? She's alive! And she didn't just leave me!—I've got to get out of here! Yesterday—why, yesterday—this morning—but now! 'Help me!' she says! I've got to get out! I—" He stopped. The dusky choking red that had surged up horribly over his face and forehead receded sharply, and left only his eyes burning black in the white incredulous horror of his face. He cried, "There's no way out!"
"There may be," said the District-Attorney, "if you will look very carefully at this lock of hair."
Denny took the soft red curl in a hand that he vainly strove to steady; they could read recognition, but no further enlightenment in his tormented face.
"Sit down!" Kane said. "Untie the string. Shake the hair loose here on the table under the lamp. Now, does anything strike you? No?"
Once more Herrick had that singular impression of Denny's going, for an instant's flash, perfectly blind. Then he said, quite quietly, "Go! The station you want is Waybrook. Drive five miles inland, on the road to Benning's Point; about three miles south of the Hoover estate. The left-hand side of the road; an old house newly fixed up and painted yellow. Pascoe's the name. And, for God's sake, go quickly."