he was genuinely alarmed at the news which I'd
given him. It apparently staggered him for a moment. Then he said in
his curt telephonic chest-tones, "I'll be up at the house, at once."

He came, before I'd even completed a second and more careful search.
His face was cold and non-committal enough, but his color was gone and
there was a look that was almost one of contrition in his troubled
eyes, which seemed unwilling to meet mine. He questioned Lossie and
cross-examined Hilton and Tokudo, and then called up the Chief of
Police. Then he telephoned to the different railway stations, and
carried Lossie off in the car to the McArthurs', to interview Benny,
and came back an hour later with that vague look of frustration still
on his face.

He sat down to luncheon, but he ate very little. He was silent for
quite a long time.

"Your boy's all right," he said in a much softer voice than I had
expected from him. "He's big enough to look after himself. And we'll
be on his trail before nightfall. He can't go far."

"No; he can't go far," I echoed, trying to fortify myself with the
knowledge that he must have taken little more than a dollar from the
gilded cast-iron elephant which he used as a bank.

"I don't want this to get in the papers," explained my husband.
"It's--it's all so ridiculous. I've put Kearney and two of his men on
the job. He's a private detective, and he'll keep busy until he gets
the boy back."

Duncan got up from the table, rather heavily. He stood hesitating a
moment and then stepped closer to my chair.

"I know it's hard," he said as he put a hand on my shoulder. "But
it'll be all right. We'll get your boy back for you."

I didn't speak, because I knew that if I spoke I'd break down and make
an idiot of myself. My husband waited, apparently expecting me to say
something. Then he took his hand away.

"I'll get busy with the car," he said with a forced matter-of-factness,
"and let you know when there's any news. I've wired Buckhorn and sent word
to Casa Grande--and we ought to get some news from there."

But there was no news. The afternoon dragged away and the house seemed
like a tomb. And at five o'clock I did what I had wanted to do for
six long hours. I sent off a forty-seven word telegram to Peter
Ketley, telling him what had happened....

Duncan came back, at seven o'clock, to get one of the new photographs
of Dinkie and Lossie for identification purposes. They had rounded up
a small boy at