CHAPTER II

A FEW POINTS


Mrs. Daniels, for that was her name, took me at once up stairs to the
third story back room. As we passed through the halls, I could not
but notice how rich, though sombre were the old fashioned walls and
heavily frescoed ceilings, so different in style and coloring from
what we see now-a-days in our secret penetrations into Fifth Avenue
mansions. Many as are the wealthy houses I have been called upon to
enter in the line of my profession, I had never crossed the threshold
of such an one as this before, and impervious as I am to any foolish
sentimentalities, I felt a certain degree of awe at the thought of
invading with police investigation, this home of ancient
Knicker-bocker respectability. But once in the room of the missing
girl, every consideration fled save that of professional pride and
curiosity. For almost at first blush, I saw that whether Mrs. Daniels
was correct or not in her surmises as to the manner of the girl's
disappearance, the fact that she had disappeared was likely to prove
an affair of some importance. For, let me state the facts in the
order in which I noticed them. The first thing that impressed me was,
that whatever Mrs. Daniels called her, this was no sewing girl's room
into which I now stepped. Plain as was the furniture in comparison
with the elaborate richness of the walls and ceiling, there were
still scattered through the room, which was large even for a thirty
foot house, articles of sufficient elegance to make the supposition