"Indeed! There's an army of men besieging the place now."
"Then you must expect to catch the writer?"
"I've been trying to for a long time."
"I'm sure I don't know what you are talking about," she said,
innocently.
"Could I have sent the ransom to the wrong address?"
He pretended to be seized with doubt, whereupon Myra Nell exclaimed,
quickly:
"Oh, not necessarily." Then, after a pause, "Norvin, how does a person
get red ink off of her hands?"
"Use a cotton broker. Let him hold it this evening."
"I'd love to, but Bernie wouldn't allow it. It was his ink, you know,
and I spilled it all over his desk. Norvin--is it really nougat?"
"It is, the most unhealthy, the most indigestible--"
"You _duck_! You _may_ hold my gory hand for--Wait!" Blake heard a
faint shriek. "Don't ring off. Something terrible--" Then the wire was
dead.
"Hello! Hello!" he called. "What's wrong, Myra Nell?" He rattled the
receiver violently, and getting no response, applied to Central. After
some moments he heard her explaining in a relieved tone:
"Oh, _such_ a fright as I had."
"What was it? For Heaven's--"
"The cake!"
"You frightened me. I thought--"
"It's four stories high and pasted together with caramel."
"You should never leave a 'phone in that way without--"
"Bernie detests caramel; but I'm expecting a 'certain party' to call on
me to-night. Norvin, do you think red ink would hurt a cake?"
"Myra Nell," he said, severely, "didn't you wash your hands before
mixing that dough?"
"Of course."
"I have my doubts. Will you really be at liberty this evening?"
"That depends entirely upon you. If I am, I shall exact another
ransom--flowers, perhaps."
"I'll send them anyhow, Marechal Neils."
"Oh, you are a--Wait!"
For a second time Miss Warren broke off; but now Norvin heard her cry
out gladly to some one. He held the receiver patiently until his arm
cramped, then rang up again.
"Oh, I forgot all about you, Norvin dear," she chattered. "Vittoria has
just come, so I can't talk to you any more. Won't you run out and meet
her? I know she's just dying to--She says she isn't, either! Oh,
fiddlesticks! You're not so busy as all that. Very well, we'll probably
eat the cake ourselves. Good-by!"
"Good-by, Avenger," he laughed.
As he turned away smiling he found Bernie Dreux comfortably ensconced
in an office chair and regarding him benignly.
"Hello, Bernie! I didn't hear you come in."
"Wasn't that Myra Nell talking?" inquired the little man.
"Yes."
"You called her 'Avenger.' What has she been up to now?"
Blake handed him the red-hand letter. To his surprise Bernie burst out
angrily:
"How dare she?"
"What?"
"It's most unladylike--begging a gentleman for gifts. I'll see that she
apologizes."
"If you do I'll punch your head. She couldn't do anything unladylike if
she tried."
"I don't approve--"
"Nonsense!"
"I'll see that she gets her chocolates."
"Oh, I've sent 'em--a deadly consignment--enough to destroy both of
you. And I've left a standing order for five pounds a week."
"But that letter--it's blackmail." Bernie groaned. "She holds me up in
the same way whenever she feels like it. She's getting suspicious of me
lately, and I daren't tell her I'm a detective. The other day she set
Remus, our gardener, on my trail, and he shadowed me all over the town.
Felicite thinks there's something wrong, too, and she's taken to
following me. Between her and Remus I haven't a moment's privacy."
"It's tough for a detective to be dogged by his gardener and his
sweetheart," Norvin sympathized. He began to run through his mail,
while his visitor talked on in his amusing, irrelevant fashion.
"I'm rather offended that I wasn't named on that Committee of Fifty,"
Bernie confessed, after a time. "You know how the Chief relied on me?"
"Exactly."
"Well, I'm full of Italian mysteries now. What I haven't discovered by
my own investigations, Vittoria Fabrizi has told me. For instance, I
know what became of the boy Gino Cressi."
"You do?" Blake looked up curiously from a letter he had been eagerly
perusing.
"He's in Mobile."
"Are you sure?"
"Certainly."
"I think you're wrong."
"Why am I wrong?"
"Read this. My mail is full of anonymous communications." He passed
over the letter in his hand, and Mr. Dreux read as follows: