essage read:

Please return at once. JERALDINE.

He paid off his bill, and posting a note to Israel Snow, giving an
address, "Care of J. Garrison," in the New York building where he had
his office, he caught the first train going down and arrived in
Manhattan at three.

CHAPTER XXVII

LIKE A BOLT FROM THE BLUE

Delaying only long enough to deposit his suit-case at his lodgings, and
neglecting the luncheon which he felt he could relish, Garrison posted
off to Eighteenth Street with all possible haste.

The house he found at the number supplied by Dorothy was an old-time
residence, with sky-scrapers looming about it. A pale woman met him at
the door.

"Miss Root--is Miss Root in, please?" he said. "I'd like to see her."

"There's no such person here," said the woman.

"She's gone--she's given up her apartment?" said Garrison, at a loss to
know what this could mean. "She went to-day? Where is she now?"

"She's never been here," informed the landlady. "A number of letters
came here, addressed in her name, and I took them in, as people often
have mail sent like that when they expect to visit the city, but she
sent around a messenger and got them this morning."

Thoroughly disconcerted by this intelligence, Garrison could only ask
if the woman knew whence the messenger had come--the address to which
he had taken the letters. The woman did not know.

There was nothing to do but to hasten to the house near Washington
Square. Garrison lost no time in speeding down Fifth Avenue.

He came to the door just in time to meet Miss Ellis, dressed to go out.

"Why, how do you do, Mr. Fairfax?" she said. "Mrs. Fairfax asked me to
tell you, if you came before I went, that she'd meet you at your
office. I felt so sorry when she was ill."

"I didn't know she'd been ill," said Garrison. "I was afraid of
something like that when she failed to write."

"Oh, yes, she was ill in the morning, the very day after you left,"
imparted Miss Ellis.

"I know you'll excuse me," interrupted Garrison. "I'll hurry along,
and hope to see you again."

He was off so abruptly that Miss Ellis was left there gasping on the
steps.

Ten minutes later he was stepping from the elevator and striding down
the office-building hall.

Dorothy was not yet in the corridor. He opened the office, beheld a
number of notes and letters on the floor, and was taking them up when
Dorothy came in, breathless, her eyes ablaze with excit