o come up. Some had fresh mounts, and all of us were glad of
the breathing space while the M. F. H. "held" the hounds.

While we waited we saw that Mrs. Brackett was riding about quickly, as
if something were on her mind. A moment she stopped to speak to her
husband, then galloped over to us.

Her face was almost white. "Gloria hasn't come up with the rest!" she
exclaimed breathlessly.

Already Brackett had told those about him and all was confusion. It was
only a moment when the members of the hunt were scouring the country
over which we had passed, with something really definite to find.

Kennedy did not pause. "Come on, Walter," he shouted, striking out down
the road, with me hard after him.

We pulled up before a road-house of remarkable quaintness and luxury of
appointment, one of the hundreds about New York which the automobile has
recreated. Before it swung the weathered sign: Cabaret Rouge.

To our hurried inquiries the manager admitted that Du Mond had been
there, but alone, and had left, also alone. Gloria had not come there.

A moment later sounds of hoofs on the hard road interrupted us and
Ritter Smith dashed up.

"Just overtook a farmer down the road," he panted. "Says he saw an
automobile waiting at the stone bridge and later it passed him with a
girl and a man in it. He couldn't recognize them. The top was up and
they went so fast."

Together we retraced the way to the stone bridge. Sure enough, there on
the side of the road were marks where a car had pulled up. The grass
about was trampled and as we searched Kennedy reached down and picked up
something white. At least it had been white. But now it was spotted with
fresh blood, as though someone had tried to stop a nose-bleed.

He looked at it more closely. In the corner was embroidered a little
"G."

Evidently there had been a struggle and a car had whizzed off. Gloria
was gone. But with whom? Had the message which we had seen her read at
the start been from Du Mond? Was the plan to elope and so avoid his
wife? Then why the struggle?

Absolutely nothing more developed from the search. An alarm was at once
sent out and the police all over the country notified. There was nothing
to do now but wait. Mrs. Brackett was frantic. But it was not now the
scandal that worried her. It was Gloria's safety.

That night, in the laboratory, Kennedy took the handkerchief and with
the blood on it made a most peculiar test before a strange-looking
little