Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/286

 counseled secrecy, because it would be easier to discover the criminal if no alarm were raised.

They discovered nothing. There was no reason why she should have run away. She had no enemies, no love affairs—except the legitimate one with her fiancé—no troubles either of body or mind, no secrets that the police detectives could so much as raise a suspicion of.

Then her father offered a reward and gave his story to the newspapers. Another “mysterious disappearance!” Lists were printed of the names of girls who had been reported “missing” to the New York police in the year past, and they made an alarming array of victims for “a plague of crime” that threatened “every home.” If the “rich and beautiful” Elizabeth Baxter were not safe, whose daughter could be considered beyond danger? She had been destroyed by the White Slave trade and the “poison needle.” She had been snatched away from crowded Fifth Avenue,