her. He didn't trust me much, and I had a dickens of a time
persuading him to talk. And then, just as I was about on the point of
succeeding, he shut up like a clam, fired me as his lawyer, and hired
Isaac Brack!"

"That little shyster? Good Heavens!"

"Right! Well, she--Zara, I mean--seemed to have vanished into thin air.
We couldn't get any trace of her at all, until Bessie here dug up a wild
idea that it was in Morton Holmes's car she'd been taken off."

"Holmes, the big dry goods merchant?" said Trenwith, with a laugh. "How
in the world did she ever get such a wild idea as that? He wouldn't be
mixed up in anything shady!"

"Just what we told her," said Charlie, unsmilingly, "but she insisted
she was right. And, a little while later, after Miss Mercer had taken
the girls to her father's farm, Holmes came along, tricked her into
getting in his car with another girl, and ran them over the state line.
He met Weeks and this Jake Hoover--but Bessie was too smart for them,
and got back over the state line safely. And the same day, putting two
and two together, I found Zara, held a prisoner in an old house that
Holmes had bought!"

"Good Lord!" said Trenwith, blankly. "So Holmes had been in it from the
start?"

"I don't know how long he's been mixed up in it, but he was in it then,
with both feet. He was hand in glove with old Weeks, and for some reason
he was mighty anxious to get both the girls across the state line and
into old Weeks's care as guardian appointed by one of their courts over
there."

"But why, Charlie--why?"

"I wish I knew. I've been cudgelling my brains for weeks to get the
answer to that question, Billy. It's kept me awake nights, and I'm no
nearer to it now than I was at the beginning. But hold on, you haven't
heard it all yet, by a good deal!"

"What? Do you mean they weren't content with that?"

"Not so that you could notice it, they weren't! The girls went to Long
Lake, up in the woods, and while they were there, a gypsy tried to carry
them off. He mixed them up a bit, and, partly by good luck, and partly
by Bessie's good nerve and pluck, he was caught and landed in jail at
Hamilton, the county seat up there."

"Was Holmes mixed up in that?"

"Yes. He'd been fool enough to write a letter to the gypsy, and sign his
own name to it. He hired lawyers to defend the gypsy, too, but that
letter smashed his case, and the gypsy went to jail. They were afraid of
Holmes, though, at Hamilton and