e always been
curious about him. I wonder if he could possibly have been related to
the Abercrombies of the Coast?"

"Whoever he was, he must have been rather a fine old codger himself for
he brought Will--his adopted daughter up splendidly," Winnie observed
with enthusiasm. "There isn't a girl in our set that can come anywhere
near her, and I think it is a dashed shame that she's thrown out on her
own. She took the whole business like a thoroughbred, walking calmly
out like that and leaving them to haggle over the details."

"And she has utterly disappeared?" asked Thode. "No one knows where
she is?"

"Nobody but your Uncle Sherlock!" Winnie grinned, and thumped himself
upon the chest. "I did a little detecting on my own and I found her
all right. She doesn't know yet that anyone has discovered her
whereabouts and I don't mean to pass it on to the Halsteads or the
governor, either. She's her own mistress now and if she wants to go
away by herself, it's no one's concern but hers."

"I can't imagine you in the role of a gumshoe!" The other laughed
outright, and it was Winnie's turn to gape in amazement.

The change which had come over his companion was too marked to go
unnoted; the listless, disheartened mood was gone and in its place the
old eager alertness manifested itself, intensified by a sort of
half-suppressed excitement.

"I turned the trick, anyway," Winnie remarked complacently after a
pause. "You see, old man, I'd heard about the way she'd held on to the
money Gentleman Geoff left her and I've caught glimpses of her more
than once riding around town in a speedy gray car with a nifty
chauffeur. I knew the Halstead bunch didn't know anything about it so
I kept quiet. I recognized the chauffeur in the chap she sent to the
governor's office for photographic copies of the documents Wiley dug
up, but the governor sent me away just when things promised to be
interesting.

"I scouted around outside the building and there, sure enough, drawn up
at the curb across the way, was the gray car. I slipped over and took
its number. Later, when we heard about her going away, I didn't say
anything, but I looked up the record of the car. The license had been
taken out under a man's name; the chauffeur's, maybe, but I traced it
to a garage up on the West Side. I took this car up there two days
ago, and whenever he took his own out I was right on the job after him.

"He found out that I was shadowing him,