rshaw?" inquired some one when an impatient young man got
in touch with Mulberry Street after an exasperating delay.

"Not too busy to try and defeat the scoundrels who are plotting against
a defenseless girl," he cried.

"Well, come down-town. We'll expect you in half an hour."

"But, Mr. Clancy asked me--"

"Better come," said the voice, and Carshaw, though fuming, bowed to
authority.

It is good for the idle rich that they should be brought occasionally
into sharp contact with life's realities. During his twenty-seven years
Rex Carshaw had hardly ever known what it meant to have a purpose
balked. Luckily for him, he was of good stock and had been well reared.

The instinct of sport, fostered by triumphs at Harvard, had developed an
innate quality of self-reliance and given him a physical hardihood which
revelled in conquest over difficulties. Each winter, instead of lounging
in flannels at the Poinciana, he was out with guides and dogs in the
Northwest after moose and caribou.

He preferred polo to tennis. He would rather pass a fortnight in
oilskins with the rough and ready fisher-folk of the Maine coast than
don the white ducks and smart caps of his wealthy yachting friends. In a
word, society and riches had not spoiled him. But he did like to have
his own way, and the suspicion that he might be thwarted in his desire
to help Winifred Bartlett cut him now like a sword. So he chafed against
the seeming slowness of the Subway, and fuel was added to the fire when
he was kept waiting five minutes on arriving at police headquarters.

He found Clancy closeted with a big man who had just lighted a fat
cigar, and this fact in itself betokened official callousness as to
Winifred's fate. Hot words leaped from his lips.

"Why have you allowed Miss Bartlett to be spirited away? Is there no law
in this State, nor any one who cares whether or not the law is obeyed?
She's gone--taken by force. I'm certain of it."

"And we also are certain of it, Mr. Carshaw," said Steingall placidly.
"Sit down. Do you smoke? You'll find these cigars in good shape," and he
pushed forward a box.

"But, is nothing being done?" Nevertheless, Carshaw sat down and took a
cigar. He had sufficient sense to see that bluster was useless and only
meant loss of dignity.

"Sure. That's why I asked you to come along."

"You see," put in Clancy, "you short-circuited the connections the night
before last, so we let you cool your heels in the rain