d
unaccountable lapses of memory and at those times they are apt to stray
away from home. Has your father been worried lately?"

"He has not been himself at all. He has been irritable, even to me, and
terrible to the servants. Only to Carter--he was never ugly to Carter.
But I do not think it was a lapse of memory. When I remember how he
looked that morning, I believe that he meant then to go away. It shows
how he had changed, when he could think of going away without a word,
and leaving me there alone."

"Then you have no brothers or sisters?"

"None. I came to you--" there she stopped.

"Please tell me how you happened to come to me," I urged. "I think you
know that I am both honored and pleased."

"I didn't know where to go," she confessed, "so I took the telephone
directory, the classified part under 'Attorneys,' and after I shut my
eyes, I put my finger haphazard on the page. It pointed to your name."

I am afraid I flushed at this, but it was a wholesome douche. In a
moment I laughed.

"We will take it as an omen," I said, "and I will do all that I can. But
I am not a detective, Miss Fleming. Don't you think we ought to have
one?"

"Not the police!" she shuddered. "I thought you could do something
without calling in a detective."

"Suppose you tell me what happened the day your father left, and how he
went away. Tell me the little things too. They may be straws that will
point in a certain direction."

"In the first place," she began, "we live on Monmouth Avenue. There are
just the two of us, and the servants: a cook, two housemaids, a
laundress, a butler and a chauffeur. My father spends much of his time
at the capital, and in the last two years, since my old governess went
back to Germany, at those times I usually go to mother's sisters at
Bellwood--Miss Letitia and Miss Jane Maitland."

I nodded: I knew the Maitland ladies well. I had drawn four different
wills for Miss Letitia in the last year.

"My father went away on the tenth of May. You say to tell you all about
his going, but there is nothing to tell. We have a machine, but it was
being repaired. Father got up from breakfast, picked up his hat and
walked out of the house. He was irritated at a letter he had read at the
table--"

"Could you find that letter?" I asked quickly.

"He took it with him. I knew he was disturbed, for he did not even say
he was going. He took a car, and I thought he was on his way to his
office. He did not come