going, but that lady had gone to Philadelphia for a few
days' visit, and there was no one in the Van Deusen home but the
servants, to whom Miss Van Deusen had merely remarked that she was
going out and would be back, probably, about ten.

Mary Snow lived in an apartment hotel and occupied her two-room suite in
spinster independence, carrying her own latch-key and accounting to no
one for her goings and comings. So accustomed had the clerks and
elevator-boys become to seeing her come in, during her newspaper days,
at all hours of the night, that they paid little heed to her movements.
So there was no one to feel any alarm when midnight came and they did
not return from their excursion to the suffering Fitzgerald.

Towards morning, however, when Miss Van Deusen failed to appear, the old
butler who had known her so many years, became alarmed, and at daylight
telephoned to Bailey Armstrong. The news came to him with a shock, but
he went at once to Miss Snow's hotel, thinking the Mayor might have
stayed there for some reason. When he found them both missing, he became
alarmed, sent for the chief of police and the district attorney, and
telegraphed Jessie Craig to return.

A systematic search was instituted, detectives set to work, and all the
majestic machinery of the law put in motion. It had happened strangely
enough, that the proprietor of the drug-store which had been their
rendezvous was out when the two women had met there, and neither of the
two young clerks knew the Mayor or her secretary by sight. Consequently,
there was not a soul who had seen or recognized either of them after
they had set out for the appointment with Fitzgerald. Neither had anyone
known of that appointment; nor would it have mattered in the least if
they had, since, Fitzgerald himself, alive and well, had known nothing
of the engagement made in his name, and was even now talking loudly
against the outrage and the shame of what was plainly foul play.

"Kidnaping," every other man said, and believed, and the detectives were
on a still hunt again for the mysterious electric cab of election eve.
In this particular line of search John Allingham was bending all his
energies. Every garage in the city was visited and made to account for
each one of its machines. No chauffeur was left unquestioned, and the
records were thoroughly examined--all with the foolish consciousness
that nothing could be easier than for some private owner or renter of an
autom