carcely knew how. Some instinct led her to turn on the light--and she
could scarcely repress a scream when she saw that Zara's bed was empty!

CHAPTER V

STRANGE SUSPICIONS

For a moment she stood in the middle of the room, dazed, wondering what
could have happened. The door was closed. Bessie rushed to it, and
looked out, but there was no sign of Zara in the hall. She listened
intently. The house was silent, with the silence that broods over a well
regulated house at night, when everyone is or ought to be asleep. But
then there was a noise from outside--a noise that came through the
windows, from the street.

Bessie rushed back into the room and over to the window. She knew now
that the noise she heard was the same one that had awakened her.

And, looking out of the window, Bessie saw what had made the noise--a
big, green automobile, that, even as she looked, was gliding slowly but
with increasing speed away from the Mercer house. She stood rooted to
the spot, unable to cry out, or to make a move. But somehow, though she
could never explain afterward how it happened, since the importance of
it did not strike her at all at the time, Bessie managed to get a mental
photograph of one thing that was to prove important in the extreme--the
number of the automobile, plainly visible in the light of the tail lamp
that shone full upon it. The figures were registered in her brain as if
she had studied them for an hour in the effort to memorize them--4587.

Then, when the car was out of sight around the corner, Bessie's power
of movement seemed to be restored to her as mysteriously as it had been
taken away. Her first impulse was to cry out and arouse the household.
But the futility of that soon struck her, and she remembered what
Charlie Jamieson had said. If anything happened, if she was frightened,
she was to call on him. And certainly something _had_ happened. Of
her alarm there could be no doubt. She was shaking like a leaf, as if
she were exposed to a cold wind, although the night was hot and even
sultry.

Swiftly she sought for and found the telephone number the lawyer had
written down for her. Then, in her bare feet, lest she make a noise and
arouse the whole household, she crept downstairs to reach the telephone.

"Oh, I do hope they won't see me or hear me," she breathed to herself.
"There's nothing they can do, and maybe, if I get hold of Mr. Jamieson
at once, we can have Zara back before they know she's