"I know what you mean," replied Allingham. "You don't have to put it in words. But something more definite and aggressive has got to be done than is doing now." "Right you are," said Armstrong. "The question is--what?" "The people are getting clamorous, not to say critical," said Allingham, "Why not call another mass-meeting and put it right to them to demand or institute a better organized search for the missing mayor?" "Good idea," said Bailey. "Let's talk it over with Mason and Turner and Jewett, and see if we can't stir Mann up a bit." The two men had been lunching together at the club, with a little talk afterwards, while they smoked their cigars in the lazy summer atmosphere of the well-kept garden. "Well, here it is three o'clock," added Bailey; "and I have an appointment at a quarter-past. So long." "I must be going, too;" and Allingham followed, walking down street as far as his office. Once there, he hung up his hat, changed his coat for a thinner one, and sat down to his desk, whereupon a pile of letters lay unopened. It was a warm day, and Allingham took his own time to read his correspondence, and jot down on the back of the letters the reply which he wished his secretary to write when she arrived in the morning. Then he rested his head in his hands and his elbows on the desk for a few moments' quiet thought before closing his office for the day. It was a habit he had, when alone, and today the baffling situation with regard to the woman-mayor was making him more worried than ever. "There's some devilish chicanery going on in high quarters," he told himself, "or this search would be conducted differently. The thing for us to do is to find out just what O. H. M., Esquire, is up to in his little mind. Hullo, what's this?" A slip of paper had been tossed by the vagrant wind, through the open window onto his desk and lay there, open, under his eyes. Ordinarily, he would have swept the crumpled thing into his waste basket. But the mysterious power which guides us when we do the unexpected thing, stayed his hands, and the half-obliterated note arrested his attention. confined in top block. Safe but come to the corner Streets and liberate Gertrude Mary S "Good Heavens!" cried Allingham. "They are somewhere in the neighborhood--or were, when this was written. No date, nothing to show where they were or when. Just like a woman. Well, well, here's something to work on at last, thank Heaven." He turned the piece of paper over and over, but there was nothing more to be seen, and he held it up to the light in vain, when he tried to make out what the penciled words had been which had completed the sentence. "Let's see. This is Thursday. What day was it, when it rained so? Tuesday? No. Sunday? Then this was written before that and has laid out where it was washed by the rain. Then it has dried in the sun and the wind caught it up and brought it here. Blessed wind!"