Vreeland’s quick wit told him that here was “no thoroughfare.” And all his mean suspicions had been strengthened by Joanna Marble’s world-worn innuendoes. His lips curled in an unmanly sneer. “Ah, yes! I think I shall write to Miss Marble, and now inform her of the young woman’s dishonorable discharge. I can, of course, send her salary to the agency, and as for my papers, I presume that they went to California with her ‘character.’ Respectable young women are usually not ashamed to own their residence. Did she tell you this up at Lakemere?” His voice was cutting and insulting in its brutal sneer. The frightened semi-cripple was struggling to her feet to leave the room, when a brawny, blue-coated young giant dashed through the still opened door. He seized Vreeland’s wrist with an iron clutch and twisted him around before the startled young girl, while the old mother’s hands went up in a pious appeal. There was the hatred of hell on Vreeland’s face as he struggled in that vise-like grip. “Forbear, Dan Daly! Remember that he’s under our roof,” the aged widow cried. The young roundsman fixed a truculent glance upon the astonished Vreeland. “Apologize, both to the present and absent, you great hulking coward,” he cried. “If it were not for my blue coat, I’d throw you down stairs. And now get out the way you came. Be quick, too, about it!” With a mumbled apology, crestfallen and raging at heart, Vreeland sneaked down stairs. “I was a fool to get into this low Irish nest,” he growled, as he sprang into his coupé. When safely back at the “Elmleaf” he reviewed the whole situation. “There’s a cold plant here! That woman has never left this town. I think that I’ll work the wires to Colorado Springs, and the detectives can handle California for me.” He went out to a gay little late supper, not realizing that Dan Daly the Roundsman had just sworn a mighty oath to “keep his eye” on the elegant member of the “Swell Mob,” and all Daly’s oaths were sworn to for love’s sweet sake, and were doubly iron clad. It was with a shiver of impending fear that Vreeland, pausing at a cigar store on Herald Square, accidentally overheard the night chatter of two late newspaper Bohemians: “I always thought Hugh Conyers was not a marrying man, but it seems that he is a quiet, sneaking lover after all.” “Down at Philadelphia the other day I saw him put his sister, Sara, on board a State line boat for Europe, and the prettiest young woman I ever saw, a staving-looking brunette, was with the old maid artist. Hugh was mighty affectionate, too, I can tell you.” “Liars and deceivers all,” raged Vreeland. “But I’ve got their whole game now. They have run her over to Europe. I can find her there easily.”