Page:The Master of Mysteries (1912).djvu/21

Rh Hudson has disappeared. She asked several pointed questions about him this afternoon, although she thought that she guarded herself well. They are both church-members, and their ambition is to go abroad. He is in the real estate business. Can you put two and two together?"

Valeska's pretty eyebrows creased themselves in thought. "Let me see. Judging from her appearance, they can't have been making very much money in the real estate business. You say they wanted to go to Europe,—wanted to stay a year in Italy, wasn't it?—and wanted all this badly. He'd naturally try to get the money in other ways; perhaps illegitimately. It might even lead him into crime. Being religious, he would naturally want to hide this from his wife. Perhaps he has been suspected and has escaped." She looked up at him anxiously.

"You're improving," said the Seer impassively. "In fact, that's just what I've been thinking myself. What we must find out is, what crime, if any, he has committed. Perhaps he is dead; perhaps he has run away with another woman. We must consider every possibility. Now, I can't very well take you up to the Hudson house, as this is a delicate case; so I wish you'd go over all the newspapers since the tenth and see what you can find that will help us."

At ten o'clock next day Astro appeared in his psychic studio, where appointments with his fashionable clients kept him till two in the afternoon. At that time he called Valeska into his favorite corner of the studio where he did his lounging and studying.