ell you then. I shouldn't have left."

When we were up in the air, I swung on him. "What are you talking about?
Babs gone?"

I could feel myself shuddering with a nameless horror.

"I don't know what I'm talking about, George. I'm about crazy. The
Quebec police think I am, anyway. I've been raising hell with them for
an hour. Babs is gone! I can't find her. I don't know where she is."

He finally calmed down enough to tell me what happened. Shortly after
his radiophone to me in New York, he had missed Babs. They had had lunch
in the huge hotel and then walked on the Dufferin Terrace--the famous
promenade outside looking down over the Lower City, the great sweep of
the St. Lawrence River and the gray-white distant Laurentian mountains.

"I was to meet her inside. I went in ahead of her. But she didn't come.
I went back to the Terrace but she was gone. She wasn't in our rooms.
Nor the library, the lobby--anywhere."

But it was afternoon, in the public place of a civilized city. In the
daylight of the Dufferin Terrace, beside the long ice toboggan slide,
under the gaze of skaters on the ice-rink and several hundred holiday
merrymakers, a young girl could hardly be murdered, or kidnapped,
without attracting attention! The Quebec police thought the young
American unduly excited about his sister, who was missing only an hour.
They would do what they could, if by dark she had not rejoined him. They
suggested that doubtless the young lady had gone shopping.

"Maybe she did," I agreed. But in my heart, I felt differently. "She'll
be waiting for us in the Hotel when we get there, Alan."

"But I'm telling you we saw Polter this morning. He lives here--not
thirty miles from Quebec. We saw him on the Terrace after breakfast.
Recognized him immediately of course."

"Did he see you?"

"I don't know. He was lost in the crowd in a minute. But I asked a
young French fellow if he knew him. He did know him, as Frank Rascor.
That must be the name he wears now. He's a famous man up here--well
known, immensely rich. I didn't know if he saw us or not. What a fool I
was to leave Babs alone, even for a minute."

We were speeding over a white-clad valley with a little frozen river
winding down its middle. Night had almost come. The leaden sky was low
above us. It began snowing. The lights of the small villages along the
river were barely visible.

"Can you land us, Alan?"

"Yes, surely. At the Municipal Field just beyond the Citade