There was no doubt about the loss I have mentioned; all could see that
page 13 was not there. In vain a second handling of every sheet, the one
so numbered was not to be found. Page 14 met the eye on the top of
the pile, and page 12 finished it off at the bottom, but no page 13 in
between, or anywhere else.
Where had it vanished, and through whose agency had this misadventure
occurred? No one could say, or, at least, no one there made any attempt
to do so, though everybody started to look for it.
But where look? The adjoining small room offered no facilities for
hiding a cigar-end, much less a square of shining white paper. Bare
walls, a bare floor, and a single chair for furniture, comprised all
that was to be seen in this direction. Nor could the room in which they
then stood be thought to hold it, unless it was on the person of some
one of them. Could this be the explanation of the mystery? No man looked
his doubts; but Mr. Cornell, possibly divining the general feeling,
stepped up to Mr. Van Broecklyn and in a cool voice, but with the red
burning hotly on either cheek, said, so as to be heard by everyone
present:
“I demand to be searched--at once and thoroughly.”
A moment’s silence, then the common cry:
“We will all be searched.”
“Is Mr. Spielhagen sure that the missing page was with the others when
he sat down in the adjoining room to read his thesis?” asked their
perturbed host.
“Very sure,” came the emphatic reply. “Indeed, I was just going through
the formula itself when I fell asleep.”
“You are ready to assert this?”
“I am ready to swear it.”
Mr. Cornell repeated his request.
“I demand that you make a thorough search of my person. I must be
cleared, and instantly, of every suspicion,” he gravely asserted, “or
how can I marry Miss Digby to-morrow.”
After that there was no further hesitation. One and all subjected
themselves to the ordeal suggested; even Mr. Spielhagen. But this effort
was as futile as the rest. The lost page was not found.
What were they to think? What were they to do?
There seemed to be nothing left to do, and yet some further attempt must
be made towards the recovery of this important formula. Mr. Cornell’s
marriage and Mr. Spielhagen’s business success both depended upon its
being in the latter’s hands before six in the morning, when he was
engaged to hand it over to a certain manufacturer sailing for Europe on
an early steamer.
Five hours!
Had Mr. Van Broecklyn a suggestion to offer? No, he was as much at sea
as the rest.
Simultaneously look crossed look. Blankness was on every face.
“Let us call the ladies,” suggested one.
It was done, and however great the tension had been before, it was even
greater when Miss Digby stepped upon the scene. But she was not a woman
to be shaken from her poise even by a crisis of this importance. When
the dilemma had been presented to her and the full situation grasped,
she looked first at Mr. Cornell and then at Mr. Spielhagen, and quietly
said:
“There is but one explanation possible of this matter. Mr. Spielhagen
will excuse me, but he is evidently mistaken in thinking that he saw the
lost page among the rest. The condition into which he was thrown by the
unaccustomed drug he had drank, made him liable to hallucinations. I
have not the least doubt he thought he had been studying the formula
at the time he dropped off to sleep. I have every confidence in
the gentleman’s candour. But so have I in that of Mr. Cornell,” she
supplemented, with a smile.
An exclamation from Mr. Van Broecklyn and a subdued murmur from all but
Mr. Spielhagen testified to the effect of this suggestion, and there
is no saying what might have been the result if Mr. Cornell had not
hurriedly put in this extraordinary and most unexpected protest:
“Miss Digby has my gratitude,” said he, “for a confidence which I hope
to prove to be deserved. But I must say this for Mr. Spielhagen. He was
correct in stating that he was engaged in looking over his formula when
I stepped into his presence with the glass of cordial. If you were not
in a position to see the hurried way in which his hand instinctively
spread itself over the page he was reading, I was; and if that does not
seem conclusive to you, then I feel bound to state that in unconsciously
following this movement of his, I plainly saw the number written on the
top of the page, and that number was--13.”
A loud exclamation, this time from Spielhagen himself, announced his
gratitude and corresponding change of attitude toward the speaker.
“Wherever that damned page has gone,” he protested, advancing towards
Cornell with outstretched hand, “you have nothing to do with its
disappearance.”
Instantly all constraint fled, and every countenance took on a relieved
expression. But the problem remained.
Suddenly those very words passed some one’s lips, and with their
utterance Mr. Upjohn remembered how at an extraordinary crisis in his
own life he had been helped and an equally difficult problem settled,
by a little lady secretly attached to a private detective agency. If she
could only be found and hurried here before morning, all might yet be
well. He would make the effort. Such wild schemes sometimes work. He
telephoned to the office and--
Was there anything else Miss Strange would like to know?