"Mary! Why, my little Mary out alone at night----" young Robert choked. "She's just twenty, Anthony--a delicate, beautiful girl like that disappearing from the most beautiful, the happiest home in all New York! Why, from the day she was born, Dalton never spared her a penny to----" "Eh? What Dalton?" Anthony asked suddenly. "What? Theodore Dalton, of course. He's her father--Dalton, the patent-medicine man, Anthony. You must have met him? You know Theodore Dalton?" Curiously, fortunately enough, sheer nervous tension jerked him away from Anthony Fry just then and set him to pacing the floor, a man distracted, a man unseeing, a man who recked of nothing on earth beyond his terrible and immediate grief. And this was very well indeed, for Anthony was making himself conspicuous! Anthony took three backward steps and looked at the unconscious Robert much as if the young man had branded himself a leper. He looked at Johnson Boller, too, although his eyes were blank--and then, one hand on his head, Anthony staggered straight out of the room and into the corridor; and, having gone that far, he turned and staggered down to the window at the end of the window-seat, where he collapsed much as if the bones had been whisked from his long, slender legs! Here Johnson Boller, following, found him five seconds later. Mr. Boller, who was beginning to feel downright peculiar himself with Vining threshing about the living-room and babbling incoherent agony, shook his old friend with no gentle hand as he demanded: "Say, you! What is it now? What in blazes got you that time, Anthony? Are you going to have a fit?" "Johnson!" Anthony said feebly, clutching coldly at Mr. Boller's plump hand. "Oh, Johnson!" "_What?_" "Her father! She's the daughter of Theodore Dalton, Johnson! She's the daughter of the man they call the liniment king!" "Yes?" said Johnson Boller. The icy hand closed tighter about his own, rousing something almost akin to sympathy in Johnson Boller's bosom and causing him to lay a soothing hand on Anthony's shoulder--for so do men cling to a raft in mid-ocean. "Johnson," Anthony Fry said piteously. "I've kidnaped the daughter of the only man in the world who can ruin me, and he'll do it!" CHAPTER XI The Other Lady It was plain enough to Johnson Boller. Anthony, poor devil, was raving at last! Since there was no one likely to ruin Anthony, the strain had developed the illusion that--or was it an illusion? Anthony had calmed these last few seconds, clinging childlike to his friend; his eyes denoted the general state of mind of a hunted doe, but there was nothing more abnormal. "Say, kid," Johnson Boller began kindly. "You----"