red with half a dozen
phone calls. No one had seen or heard from her. The Quebec police were
sending a man up to talk with Alan.

"Well, we won't be here," Alan called to me. He was standing by the
window in Babs' room; he was trembling too much to use the phone. I hung
up the receiver and went though the connecting door to join him.

Babs' room! It sent a pang through me. A few of her garments were lying
around. A negligee was laid out on the large bed. A velvet boudoir
doll--she had always loved them--stood on the dresser. Upon this Hotel
room, in one day, she had impressed her personality. Her perfume was in
the air. And now she was gone.

"We won't be here," Alan was repeating. He gripped me at the window.
"Look." In his hand was an ugly-looking, smokeless, soundless automatic
of the Essen type. "And I've got another one for you. Brought them with
me."

His face was white and drawn, but his hands had steadied. The tremble
was gone out of his voice.

"I'm going after him, George! Now! Understand that? Now? His place is
only thirty miles from here, out there in the mountains. You can see it
in the daylight--a wall around his property and a stone castle which he
built in the middle of it. A gold mine? Hell!"

There was nothing to be seen now out of the window but the snow-filled
darkness, the blurred lights of Lower Quebec and the line of dock lights
five hundred feet below us.

"Will you fly me, George?"

"Of course."

I was the one trembling now; the cool feel of the automatic which Alan
thrust into my hand seemed suddenly to crystallize Babs' peril. I was
here in her room, with the scent of her perfume around me, and this
deadly weapon was needed! But the trembling was gone in a moment.

"Yes, of course, Alan. No use talking to the police. I gave them all the
information--a description of her, what you said she was wearing. No
sense dragging Polter's name into it, with nothing tangible to go on.
The police won't ransack the castle of a rich man just because you can't
find your sister. Come on. You can tell me what this place is like as we
go."

* * * * *

Bundled in our flying suits we hurried from the Hotel, climbed the
Citadel slope and in ten minutes were in the air. The wind sucked at us.
The snow now was falling with thick, huge flakes. Directed by Alan, I
headed out over this ice-filled St. Lawrence, past the frozen Ile
d'Orleans, toward Polter's mysterious mounta