ck search of the vicinity that was rapidly being cleared and
restored to order by a couple of efficient police officers, but without
avail.

Neither Dorothy nor the chauffeur could be found.

One of the officers ordered him to move along with his car. There was
nothing else to be done. Reluctantly, and not without feelings of
annoyance and worry, combined with those of baffled mystery and
chagrin, Garrison was presently obliged to climb to the driver's seat
and take the wheel in hand.

The motor was running, slowly, to a rhythmic beat. He speeded it up,
threw off the brake, put the gears in the "low," and slipped in the
clutch. Over the bridge in the halted procession of traffic he steered
his course--a man bereft of his comrade and his driver and with a
motor-car thrust upon his charge.

Through the streets of New York he was finally guiding the great
purring creature of might, which in ordinary circumstances would have
filled his being with delight. Thorough master of throttle,
spark-advance, and speed-lever, he would have asked nothing better than
to drive all day--if Dorothy were only at his side.

He had never felt more utterly disconcerted in his life. Where had she
gone--and why?

What did it mean to have the chauffeur also disappear?

Had the two gone off together?

If so, why should she choose a companion of his type?

If not, then what could have formed the motive for the man's abrupt
flight from the scene?

And what should be done with the motor-car, thus abandoned to his care?

A quick suspicion that the car had been stolen came to Garrison's mind.
Nevertheless it was always possible that Dorothy had urged the driver
to convey her out of the crowd, and that the driver had finally
returned to get his car, and found it gone; but this, for many reasons,
seemed unlikely.

Dorothy had shown her fear in her last startled question: "Jerold, you
don't suspect me?" She might have fled in some sort of fear after
that. But the driver--what was it that had caused him also to vanish
at a time so unexpected?

Garrison found himself obliged to give it up. He could think of
nothing to do with the car but to take it to the stand where he had
hired it in the morning. The chauffeur might, by chance, appear and
claim his property. Uneasy, with the thing thus left upon his hands,
and quite unwilling to be "caught with the goods," Garrison was swiftly
growing more and more exasperated.

He knew he co