“Me? I’m going to put those ⸻ behind the bars if it takes every cent I’ve got in the world!”
“Sure! But first you can get that fifty thousand 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 to either 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 that 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 him, hoping that 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