"Miss Oppner," he said warmly, "you are all that Mary has assured me. You are a real chum. I can say no more. But it is quite impossible, believe me." There was such finality in the words that she was silenced. Haredale abruptly changed the subject. An hour passed. Two hours passed. Zoe began to grow concerned on her father's behalf. He was in poor health, and his physician's orders were imperative upon the point of avoiding business. Half-way through the third hour she made up her mind. "He has wasted his time long enough," she pronounced firmly--and the expression struck Haredale as oddly chosen. "I am going to inform him that his 'conference' is closed." She passed out into the corridor to where Mr. Alden, his chair tilted at a comfortable angle, and his brogue-shod feet upon a coffee-table which bore also a decanter, a siphon, and a box of cigars, contentedly was pursuing his instructions. He stood up as she appeared. "Mr. Alden," she said, "I wish to speak to Mr. Oppner." The detective spread his hands significantly. "I respect your scruples, Mr. Alden," Zoe continued, "but my father's orders did not apply to me. Will you please go in and request him to see me for a moment?" Perceiving no alternative, Alden opened the door, crossed the little anteroom, and knocked softly at the inner door. He received no reply to his knocking, and knocked again. He knocked a third, a fourth time. With a puzzled glance at Miss Oppner he opened the door and entered. An unemotional man, he usually was guilty of nothing demonstrative. But the appearance of the room wrenched a hoarse exclamation from his stoic lips. In the first place, it was in darkness; in the second, when, with the aid of the electric lantern which he was never without, he had dispersed this darkness--he saw that _it was empty_! The scene of confusion that ensued upon this incredible discovery defies description. All the telephones in the Astoria could not accommodate the frantic people who sought them. Messenger boys in troops appeared. Hundreds of guests ran upstairs and hundreds of guests ran downstairs. Every groaning lift, ere long, was bearing its freight of police and pressmen to the scene of the most astounding mystery that ever had set London agape. Soon it was ascertained that the current had been disconnected in some way from the room where the six magnates had met. But how, otherwise than through the door, they had been spirited away from a sixth floor apartment, was a problem that no one appeared competent to tackle; that they had not made their exit via the door was sufficiently proven by the expression of stark perplexity which dwelt upon the face of Mr. Aloys. X. Alden. Whilst others came and went, scribbling hasty notes in dog-eared notebooks, he, a human statue of Amaze, gazed at the open window, continuously and vacantly. Jostled by the crowds of curious and interested visitors, he stood, the most surprised man in the two hemispheres.