“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Me? I’m going to put those — behind bars if it takes every cent I’ve got in the world!”
“Sure! But first you get that 50,000 ready, so you can give it to them when they ask for it.”
He clicked his jaw shut and thrust his face into mine.
“I’ve never been clubbed into doing anything in my life! And I’m too old to start now!” he said. “I’m going to call these people’s bluff!”
“That’s going to make it lovely for your daughter. But, aside from what it’ll do to her, it’s the wrong play. Fifty thousand isn’t a whole lot to you, and paying it over will give us two chances that we haven’t got now. One when the payment is made — a chance either to nab whoever comes for it or get a line on them. And the other when your daughter is returned. No matter how careful they are, it’s a cinch she’ll be able to tell us something that will help us grab them.”
He shook his head angrily, and I was tired of arguing with him. So I left, hoping he’d see the wisdom of the course I had advised before too late.
At the Gatewood residence I found butlers, second men, chauffeurs, cooks, maids, upstairs girls, downstairs girls, and a raft of miscellaneous flunkies — he had enough servants to run a hotel.
What they told me amounted to this: The girl had not received a phone call, note by messenger, or telegram — the time-honored devices for luring a victim out to a murder or abduction — before she left the house. She had told her maid that she would be back within an hour or two; but the maid had not been alarmed when her mistress failed to return all that night.
Audrey was the only child, and since her mother’s death she had come and gone to suit herself. She and her father didn’t hit it off very well together — their natures were too much alike, I gathered — and he never knew where she was. There was nothing unusual about her remaining away all night. She seldom bothered to leave word when she was going to stay overnight with friends.
She was nineteen years old, but looked several years older; about five feet five inches tall, and slender. She had blue eyes, brown hair — very thick and long — was pale and very nervous. Her photographs, of which I took a handful, showed that her eyes were large, her nose small and regular, and her chin pointed.
She was not beautiful, but in the one photograph where a smile had wiped off the sullenness of her mouth, she was at least pretty.
When she left the house she was wearing a light tweed skirt and jacket with a London tailor’s labels in them, a buff silk shirtwaist with stripes a shade darker, brown wool stockings, low-heeled brown oxfords, and an untrimmed gray felt hat.
I went up to her rooms — she had three on the third floor — and looked through all her stuff. I found nearly a bushel of photographs of men, boys, and girls; and a great stack of letters of varying degrees of intimacy, signed with a wide assortment of names and nicknames. I made notes of all the addresses I found.
Nothing in her rooms seemed to have any bearing on her abduction, but there was a chance that one of the names and addresses might be of someone who had served as a decoy. Also, some of her friends might be able to tell us something of value.
I dropped in at the Agency and distributed the names and addresses among the three operatives who were idle, sending them out to see what they could dig up.
Then I reached the police detectives who were working on the case — O’Gar and Thode — by telephone, and went down to the Hall of Justice to meet them. Lusk, a post-office inspector, was also there. We turned the job around and around, looking at it from every angle, but not getting very far. We were all agreed, however, that we couldn’t take a chance on any publicity, or work in the open, until the girl was safe.
They had had a worse time with Gatewood than I — he had wanted to put the whole thing in the newspapers, with the offer of a reward, photographs, and all. Of course, Gatewood was right in claiming that this was the most effective way of catching the kidnapers — but it would have been tough on his daughter if her captors happened to be persons of sufficiently hardened character. And kidnapers as a rule aren’t lambs.
I looked at the letter they had sent. It was printed with pencil on ruled paper of the kind that is sold in pads by every stationery dealer in the world. The envelope was just as common, also addressed in pencil, and postmarked San Francisco, September 20, 9 P.M. That was the night she had been seized.
The letter read:
Sir:
We have your charming daughter and place a value of $50,000 upon her. You will get the money ready in $100 bills at once so there will be no delay when we tell you how it is to be paid over to us.
We beg to assure you that thing! will go badly with your daughter should you not do as you are told, or should you bring the police into this matter, or should you do anything foolish.
$50,000 is only a small fraction of what you stole while we were living in mud and blood in France for you, and we mean to get that much or else!
A peculiar note in several ways. They are usually written with a great pretense of partial illiterateness. Almost always there’s an attempt to lead suspicion astray. Perhaps the ex-service stuff was there for that purpose... or perhaps not.
Then there was a postscript:
We know someone who will buy her even after we are through with her — in case you won’t listen to reason.
The letter from the girl was written jerkily on the same kind of paper, apparently with the same pencil.
Daddy —
Please do as they ask! I am so afraid —
A door at the other end of the room opened, and a head came through.
“O’Gar! Thode! Gatewood just called up. Get up to his office right away!”
The four of us tumbled out of the Hall of Justice and into a police car.
Gatewood was pacing his office like a maniac when we pushed aside enough hirelings to get to him. His face was hot with blood and his eyes had an insane glare in them.
“She just phoned me!” he cried thickly, when he saw us.
It look a minute or two to get him calm enough to tell us about it.
“She called me on the phone. Said, ‘Oh, Daddy! Do something! I can’t stand this — they’re killing me!’ I asked her if she knew where she was, and she said, No, but I can see Twin Peaks from here. There’s three men and a woman, and—’ And then I heard a man curse, and a sound as if he had struck her, and the phone went dead. I tried to get central to give me the number, but she couldn’t! It’s a damned outrage the way the telephone system is run. We pay enough for service, God knows, and we...”
O’Gar scratched his head and turned away from Gatewood.
“In sight of Twin Peaks! There are hundreds of houses that are!”
Gatewood meanwhile had finished denouncing the telephone company and was pounding on his desk with a paperweight to attract our attention.
“Have you people done anything at all?” he demanded.
I answered him with another question: “Have you get the money ready?”
“No,” he said, “I won’t be held up by anybody!”
But he said it mechanically, without his usual conviction — the talk with his daughter had shaken him out of some of his stubbornness. He was thinking of her safety a little now instead of only his own fighting spirit.
We went at him hammer and tongs for a few minutes, and after a while he sent a clerk out for the money.
We split up the field then. Thode was to take some men from headquarters and see what he could find in the Twin Peaks end of town; but we weren’t very optimistic over the prospects there — the territory was too large.