It was well on in the morning, and two weeks after the opening of the hotel, and judicious advertising had resulted in the house being comfortably full already. The rooms--some single, but mostly en suite--had been engaged largely in advance, and the guests were practically all of the well-to-do class, with a fair sprinkling of very wealthy. Mrs. de Puyster van Dietrich was not the only multimillionaire, for there were several others. Mallory was a stout, imposing-looking man, always immaculately attired, and with a suave manner that had perhaps led in the first place to his becoming a “promoter.” Assuredly it had helped him when fairly launched in that interesting occupation. His very appearance was a guarantee that the company he represented was sound and certain to pay healthy dividends to the stockholders. Paul Savage, his partner, was a cadaverous individual, with many lines about his lank jaw and the hunted look in his deep-set eyes which one often sees in the hard-working business man, whose talent is mainly for detail. The two men had been associated in various schemes for years. Some of them had turned out well, while others had not. Now they had plunged on this hotel scheme, got a company behind them, and were hoping that, when the time came for them to “unload,” they would find themselves with enough money to rest on their oars while selecting some new enterprise, which would promise even better than this. On this morning, Mallory had been sitting behind his desk, swelling with satisfaction as he figured on the profits that would result from the guests who already were in the house, if they stayed a week or two longer, without counting others that might come. He had just been reading a letter he had received a week ago from a certain Baroness Latour, who had engaged a suite of rooms, insisting that they must look out over the sea. The price was not so much an object, as her having pleasant rooms, with a clear ocean view. “Well,” Mallory had muttered, “the baroness has rooms right over the cliff. That ought to suit her. I hope she slept well last night. There is a clear drop from her window of forty-five feet to the water, at least. The waves wash against the wall of the house on that side.” He had got to this stage of his musings when Paul Savage burst in with the news that Mrs. van Dietrich had disappeared in so inexplicable a way from her apartments. How a rather large lady, of dignified aspect and deliberate movement, could have been spirited from her bed and carried out of the house, without anybody being aware of it, was something that neither of the partners could comprehend. “If her doors had been unfastened,” grunted Savage, “there might have been some explanation. But all of them are locked and bolted within.” “She’d gone to bed, you say?” “So her maid says. But she had dressed herself before she went away.” “That shows she wasn’t kidnaped,” remarked Mallory.