Ten days before, a carriage had
driven up to the door, Miss Holladay and her maid had entered it and
been driven away. The carriage had been called, he thought, from some
neighboring stable, as the family coachman had been sent away with the
other servants. They had driven down the avenue toward Thirty-fourth
Street, where, he supposed, they were going to the Long Island
station. We looked through the house--it was in perfect order. Miss
Holladay's rooms were just as she would naturally have left them. Her
father's rooms, too, were evidently undisturbed.
"Here's one thing," I said, "that might help," and I picked up a
photograph from the mantel. "You won't mind my using it?"
Mr. Royce took it with trembling hand and gazed at it for a moment--at
the dark eyes, the earnest mouth----Then he handed it back to me.
"No," he answered; "not if it will really help; we must use every
means we can. Only----"
"I won't use it unless I absolutely have to," I assured him; "and when
I'm done with it, I'll destroy it."
"Very well," he assented, and I put it in my pocket.
There was nothing more to be discovered there, and we went away, after
warning the two men to say not a word to anyone concerning their
mistress's disappearance.
Plainly, the first thing to be done was to find the coachman who had
driven Miss Holladay and her maid away from the house; and with this
end in view, we visited all the stables in the neighborhood; but from
none of them had a carriage been ordered by her.
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