Page:Top-Notch Magazine, May 1 1915 (IA tn 1915 05 01).pdf/86

 "I was right, you see, in saying we had need for haste," Trant said to young Edwards. "But there is one thing we can try, even though he is not here. Let me have the picture you showed me this morning!"

He took from Winton's hand the picture of Eva Silber, opened the leather case, and held it so the child could see.

"Do you know that lady?"

"Yes!" The child showed sudden interest. "It is Mr. Meyan's wife."

"His wife!" cried young Edwards.

"So," the psychologist said swiftly to the little girl, "you have seen this lady here?"

"She comes last night." The child had grown suddenly loquacious. "Because she is coming, Mr. Meyan makes trouble that we should get a room ready for her. Already she has sent her things. And we get ready the room next to his. But because she wants still another room, she goes away last night again. Rooms come not so easy here; we have many people. But now we have another, so to-night she is coming again."

"Does it now seem necessary for us to press this investigation further?" Cuthbert Edwards asked caustically. As he spoke, the sound of measured, heavy blows came to them down the dark stair apparently from the second floor of the building. The elder Edwards cried excitedly and triumphantly: "What is that? Listen! That man—Meyan, if it is Meyan—must be here; for that is the same hammering."

"This is even better luck than we could have expected!" exclaimed the psychologist; and he slipped past the child and sped swiftly up the stairs, with his companions closely following. At the head of the flight he passed a stunted woman whose marked resemblance to the little girl below established her at once as mother and landlady, and a trembling old man. With the elder Edwards, Trant tore open door after door of the rooms upon that floor, and the floor above, before the woman could prevent him. The rooms were all empty.

"Meyan must have escaped!" said Cuthbert Edwards as they returned, crestfallen, to the second story. "But we have proof at least that the child spoke the truth in saying Miss Silber had been here to see him, for she hardly would have allowed her father to come here without her."

"Her father—so this is Miss Silber's father!" Trant swiftly turned to examine with the keenest interest the old man, who shrank back, shivering and shuddering, in a corner. Even in that darkened hall he conveyed to the psychologist an impression of hoary whiteness. His hair and beard were snowy white, the dead pallor of his skin was the unhealthy whiteness of potato shoots that have sprouted in a cellar, and the iris of his eyes had faded until it was almost indistinguishable. Yet there remained something in the man's appearance which told Trant that he was not really old—that he still should be moving, daring, self-confident, a leader among men, instead of cringing and shrinking thus at the slightest move of these chance visitors.

"Meyan? Is it because you are looking for Meyan that you have made all this disturbance?" the woman broke in. "Then why didn't you ask? For now he is at the saloon, I think, only across the street."

"Then we will go there at once," said Trant. "But I will ask you"—he turned to the elder Edwards—"to wait for us at the motor, for two of us will be enough for my purpose, and more than two may defeat it by alarming Meyan."

Trant descended the stairs, took his instrument case from the motor, and with young Edwards crossed the street quickly to the saloon.