ed the short, heavy and loquacious detective, "That
explains the whole thing. Miss Nash has gone out of town."

"She hasn't done any such thing," Marion exclaimed indignantly,
springing to her feet. "Helen isn't that kind of a girl. I know she is
peculiar, but she isn't a coward. It's evident now that she knew
something about affairs here that resulted in the sending of that
threatening letter to me, and she kept her information secret for some
reason. Whatever her reason was, she meant all right."

"Did she at any time urge or suggest that it would not be well for the
girls to come here in the holidays?" Mr. Stanlock inquired.

"Never a word," Marion replied, positively. "I admit that once or
twice I noticed that there was something peculiar in her manner, and
it may have had something to do with her condition back of these
developments, but that is all."

"How do you account for her disappearance?" asked Detective Meyer,
with puzzled humility.

"I don't pretend to account for it," Marion replied, quickly. "That's
a problem for you men to solve. All I know is that Helen did not
intentionally desert us. She's gone, and she went for some reason, and
I believe that reason is connected with the letter. Now, it's up to
you men to find her, and, if you don't find her pretty quick, I'll go
and find her myself."

A murmur of applause swept the room.

"We'll do it," declared the tall, thin detective.

"If it's within human power," conditioned the square-built, deep-eyed
man.

The talkative gentleman of genius said nothing. All three of them left
the house a few minutes later.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XIV.

TRAPPED.

There was little sleep for anyone at the Stanlock home that night. The
mystery of the patched-up letter, coupled with Helen's apparently
voluntary disappearance and the fear that she had been led into a
trap of some sort, in line with the threat contained in the
skull-and-cross-bones letter, kept everybody up until long after
midnight. Meanwhile, Mr. Stanlock called up the police station and
asked the lieutenant in charge to come over and begin work on a new
angle of the strike developments.

"One of the girls has disappeared, and we are afraid that something
serious has happened," he told the officer over the telephone.

The latter soon drove up to the house in an automobile and was
admitted by Mr. Stanlock. The conference lasted half an hour, but
before half t