e or possible place where the young
lawyer might be had been communicated with in vain, Henry Blaine set
the perfect machinery of his forces at work to trace him.

It was dawn before he could spare a precious moment to go to Anita
Lawton. On his arrival he found her pacing the floor, wringing her
slim hands in anguish.

"He is dead." She spoke with the dull hopelessness of utter
conviction. "I shall never see him again. I feel it! I know it!"

"My dear child!" Blaine put his hands upon her shoulders in fatherly
compassion. "You must put all such morbid fancies from your mind. He
is not dead and we shall find him. It may be all a mistake--perhaps
some important matter concerning a client made it necessary for him to
leave the city over night."

She shook her head despairingly.

"No, Mr. Blaine. You know as well as I that Ramon is just starting in
his profession. He has no clients of any prominence, and my father's
influence was really all that his rising reputation was being built
upon. Besides, nothing but a serious accident or--or death would keep
him from me!"

"If he had met with any accident his identity would have been
discovered and we would be notified, unless, as in the case when he
was run down by that motor-car, he did not wish them to let you know
for fear of worrying you."

Blaine watched the young girl narrowly as he spoke. Was she aware of
the two additional attempts only the day before on the life of the man
she loved?

"He merely followed a dear, unselfish impulse because he knew that in
a few hours at most he would be with me; but now it is morning! The
dawn of a new day, and no word from him! Those terrible people who
tried to kill him that other time to keep him from coming to me in my
trouble have made away with him. I am sure of it now."

The detective breathed more freely. Evidently Ramon Hamilton had had
the good sense to keep from her his recent danger.

"You can be sure of nothing, Miss Lawton, save the fact that Mr.
Hamilton is _not_ dead," Henry Blaine said earnestly. "You do not
realize, perhaps, the one salient fact that criminal experts who deal
with cases of disappearance have long since recognized--the most
difficult of all things to conceal or do away with in a large city is
a dead body."

Anita shivered and clasped her hands convulsively, but she did not
speak, and after a scarcely perceptible pause, the detective went on:

"You must not let your mind dwell on the possib