Doughty had, of course, been questioned, but it seemed obvious that this time he knew nothing of his old employer’s movements. He had accordingly stayed on in Montreal, attending to his new duties and paying very little attention to Small’s absence. Less than three weeks after Small had gone, and one week after the case had been taken to the police, however, new attention began to be paid to Doughty, and there were some unpleasant whisperings. On Monday morning, December 23, just three weeks after Small had walked off into the void, came the dramatic break. Doughty, as was his habit, left Montreal the preceding Saturday evening to spend Sunday in Toronto with his relatives and friends. On Monday morning, instead of appearing at his desk, he telephoned from Toronto that he was ill and might not be at work for some days. His employers took him at his word and paid no further attention until, three days having elapsed, they telephoned to the home of Doughty’s sister. She had not seen him since Monday. The man was gone! If the Small disappearance case had heretofore been considered a somewhat dubious jest, it now became a genuine sensation. For the first time the Canadian and American newspapers began to treat the matter under scare headlines, and now at last the Dominion police began to move with force and alacrity. An investigation of the safe-deposit vaults, where Small was now said to have kept a large total of securities, showed that Doughty had visited this place twice on December 2, the day of Small’s disappearance, and he had on each occasion either put in, or taken away, some bonds. A hasty count of the securities was said to have revealed a shortage of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Even this discovery did not change the minds of the skeptics, in whose ranks the missing magnate’s wife still remained. It was now believed that Doughty had received a secret summons from Small, and that he had taken the bonds, which had previously been put aside, at Small’s instruction, and gone to join his chief in some hidden retreat. A good part of Toronto believed that Small had gone on a protracted “party,” or that he had seized the opportunity offered by the closing out of his business to quit a wife with whom he had long been in disagreement. When neither Small nor Doughty reappeared, opinion gradually veered about to the opposite side. After all, it was possible that Small had not gone away voluntarily, that he was the victim of some criminal conspiracy, and that Doughty had fled when he felt suspicion turning its face toward him. The absence of the supposed one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in bonds provided sufficient motivation to fit almost any criminal hypothesis.