the pitcher
on the center-table, but if she did, she didn't come back after she had
got it. None of us ever saw her again."

"Did you follow Mr. Ransom when he walked through those rooms?"

"No, sir; I stayed in the hall."

"Did the lady hobble when she slid thus mysteriously out of sight?"

"A little. Not so much as when she came in. But she wasn't at her ease,
sir. Her shoes were certainly too small."

"I think I will take a peep at those rooms now," Gerridge remarked to the
manager.

Mr. Loomis bowed, and together they crossed the office to the
reception-room door. The diagram of this portion of the hotel will give
you an idea of these connecting rooms.

[Illustration]

There are three of them, as you will see, all reception-rooms. Mr. Ransom
had passed through them all in looking for his wife. In No. 1 he found
several ladies sitting and standing, all strangers. He encountered no one
in No. 2, and in No. 3 just one person, a lady in street costume
evidently waiting for some one. To this lady he had addressed himself,
asking if she had seen any one pass that way the moment before. Her reply
was a decided "No"; that she had been waiting in that same room for
several minutes and had seen no one. This staggered him. It was as if his
wife had dissolved into thin air. True, she might have eluded him by
slipping out into the hall by means of door two at the moment he entered
door one; and alert to this possibility, he hastened back into the hall
to look for her. But she was nowhere visible, nor had she been observed
leaving the building by the man stationed at entrance A. But there was
another exit, that of B. Had she gone out that way? Mr. Ransom had taken
pains to inquire and had been assured by the man in charge that no
lady had left by that door during the last ten minutes. This he had
insisted on, and when Mr. Loomis and the detective came in their turn
to question him on this point he insisted on it again. The mystery seemed
complete,--at least to the manager. But the detective was not quite
satisfied. He asked the man if at any time that day, before or after Mrs.
Ransom's disappearance, he had swung the door open for a lady who walked
lame. The answer was decisive. "Yes; one who walked as if her shoes were
tight."

"When?"

"Oh a little while after the gentleman asked his questions."

"Was she dressed in brown?"

That he didn't know. He didn't look at ladies' dresses unless they were
something specia