sted, "you get your press agent to make capital out
of her absence. The papers would publish her picture and thousands of
people would look her up for you."

The manager ceased his perplexed massage of his forehead. He shook
hands genially.

"I'd thought of that with some frills. 'Has beautiful dancer met foul
play? Millions in jewels on her person when last seen.' Old stuff, but
they rise to it."

"That will help," Graham said to Bobby when they were in the car again.
"The reporters will find Maria quicker than any detective I can put my
hand on. My man evidently fell down because she had gone before I got him
on the case." At his office they learned that was the fact. The private
detective had been able to get no slightest clue as to Maria's
whereabouts. Moreover, Bobby's description of the stranger who had
entered the cafe with her merely suggested a type familiar to the
Tenderloin. For purposes of identification it was worthless. Always
followed by the car from Smithtown, they went to the hotel where Paredes
had lived, to a number of his haunts. Bobby talked with men who knew him,
but he learned nothing. Paredes's friends had had no word since the man's
departure for the Cedars the day before. So they turned their backs on
the city, elated by the significance of Maria's absence, yet worried by
the search and the watchful car which never lost sight of them. When they
were in the country Graham sighed his relief. "You haven't been stopped.
Therefore, nothing was found at your apartment, but if that wasn't
planted why should Maria have sent an incriminating note there?"
"Unless," Bobby answered, "she told the truth. Unless she was sincere
when she mailed it. Unless she learned something important between the
time she wrote it and her disappearance from her home."

"Frankly, Bobby," Graham said, "the note and the circumstances under
which it came to you are as damaging as the footprints and the
handkerchief, but it doesn't tell us how any human being could have
entered that room to commit the murders and disturb the bodies. At least
we've got one physical fact, and I'm going to work on that."

"If it is Maria prowling around the Cedars," Bobby said, "she's amazingly
slippery, and with Paredes gone what are you going to do with your
physical fact? And how does it explain the friendly influence that wiped
out my footprints? Is it a friendly or an evil influence that snatched
away the evidence and that keeps it secret