Part 32 (1/2)
Under the rug it went, and across to the window. She looked out. A fire escape pa.s.sed the window. It was open. She saw the little wire cross through the woodwork to the outside brick construction and down the wall. Softly she clambered down the fire-escape until she could peer through the window on the floor below.
There at a desk, in the private office of the ”Mercantile” a.s.sociation, sat the man who had been hugging her predecessor at Trubus'
switchboard, the man who had exchanged the curious looks with the philanthropist. Talking to him was the man who had taken her sister away from the candy store the day before!
Hurriedly she climbed back up the fire escape into the window, out through the door of the private office, closing it behind her.
She telephoned Bobbie at the station house. Fortunately he was there.
She gave him her address, and before he could express his surprise begged him to hurry to the doorway of the building and wait for her.
He promised.
Mary kept her nerves as quiet as she could, praying that the man Sawyer would not leave before she could follow him with Bobbie. In a few minutes one of the girls from the stenography room came out. Seeing that she was the new girl the young woman spoke: ”Do you want me to relieve you while you go to lunch. I'm not going out to-day. I'm so glad to see anyone here but that fresh Miss Emerson that it will be a pleasure.”
”Thank you. I do want to go now,” said Mary nervously. She hurriedly donned her hat and rushed down to the street. Bobbie was waiting for her, as he had lost not a minute.
They waited behind the big door column for several minutes. Suddenly a man came swinging through the portal. It was Sawyer.
Bobbie remembered him instantly, while Mary gripped his arm until she pinched it.
”We'll follow him,” said Burke, for the girl had already told of the dictagraph conversation.
Follow him they did. Up one street and down another. At last the man led them over into Burke's own precinct. He ascended the iron steps of an old-fas.h.i.+oned house which had once been a splendid mansion in generations gone by.
”Ah, that's where Lorna is hidden, as sure as you're standing here, Mary. From what he said no harm has come to her yet. Hurry with me to the station house, and we'll have the reserves go through that house in a jiffy.”
It took not more than ten minutes for the police to surround the house.
But disappointment was their only reward. Somehow or other the rascals had received a tip of premonition of trouble; perhaps Shepard was suspicious of his princ.i.p.als, and wished to move the girl out of their reach.
The house was empty, except for a few pieces of furniture.
”Look!” cried Mary, as she went through the rooms with Bob. ”There is a handkerchief. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it up. It was one of her own, with the initials ”M. B.” in a monogram.
”Lorna has been here,” she exclaimed. ”I remember handing her that very handkerchief when we were in the store yesterday.”
”What's to be done now?” thought Bobbie. ”We had better go up to your father and tell him what we know--it is not as bad as it might have been.”
”Precious little comfort,” sighed Mary, exhausted beyond tears.
They reached the desolate home, and Bob broke the news to the old man.
As Mary poured forth her story of the discovery in Trubus' office, her father's face lighted with renewed hope.
To their surprise he laughed, softly, and then spoke:
”Mary, my child, my long hours of study and labor on my own invention have not been in vain. My dictagraph-recorder--this very model here, which I have just completed shall be put to its first great test to save my own daughter. Heaven could reward me in no more wonderful manner than to let it help in the rescue of little Lorna--why did I not think of it sooner?”
”What shall we do, father?” breathlessly cried Mary.
”Can I help, Mr. Barton?”