What had become of Howard? So
far Geyer's search had shown that Holmes had rented three houses, one in
Cincinnati, one in Detroit, and one in Toronto. Howard had been with his
sisters at the hotels in Indianapolis, and in Detroit the house agents
had said that, when Holmes had rented a house there, he had been
accompanied by a boy. Yet an exhaustive search of that house had
revealed no trace of him. Geyer returned to Detroit and again questioned
the house agents; on being pressed their recollection of the boy who had
accompanied Holmes seemed very vague and uncertain. This served only to
justify a conclusion at which Geyer had already arrived, that Howard
had never reached Detroit, but had disappeared in Indianapolis. Alice's
letters, written from there, had described how Holmes had wanted to take
Howard out one day and how the boy had refused to stay in and wait for
him. In the same way Holmes had called for the two girls at the Albion
Hotel in Toronto on October 25 and taken them out with him, after which
they had never been seen alive except by the old gentleman at No. 18 St.
Vincent Street.

If Geyer could discover that Holmes had not departed in Indianapolis
from his usual custom of renting houses, he might be on the high way
to solving the mystery of Howard's fate. Accordingly he returned to
Indianapolis.

In the meantime, Holmes, in his prison at Philadelphia, learnt of the
discovery at Toronto. "On the morning of the 16th of July," he writes
in his journal, "my newspaper was delivered to me about 8.30 a.m., and I
had hardly opened it before I saw in large headlines the announcement
of the finding of the children in Toronto. For the moment it seemed
so impossible that I was inclined to think it was one of the frequent
newspaper excitements that had attended the earlier part of the case,
but, in attempting to gain some accurate comprehension of what was
stated in the article, I became convinced that at least certain bodies
had been found there, and upon comparing the date when the house was
hired I knew it to be the same as when the children had been in Toronto;
and thus being forced to realise the awfulness of what had probably
happened, I gave up trying to read the article, and saw instead the two
little faces as they had looked when I hurriedly left them--felt the
innocent child's kiss so timidly given, and heard again their earnest
words of farewell, and realised that I had received another burden to
carry t