Granny caught his arm. "No, you can't go, Johnny Gilfooly! You got to stay here with me! I've got to have something left!" And then she changed her mind and went thudding down the corridor, Johnny's hot little hand clasped tight. She was in the car before Mr. Bill, Johnny close beside her.

"You can't go, Granny!" frowned Joe.

"I shall go!" Granny's voice was quite as determined as Joe's. They seemed to be made from the same piece of adamant. "I guess Tessie is my own granddaughter! I have a right to go. And Johnny's Tessie own brother! I guess he has a right to go, too. Tessie'll want to see us!"

Joe did not waste any time debating the question, but jumped in beside Mr. Bill. Norah Lee had run to them, and was sitting beside Granny, holding Granny's hand. Charlie Deakin squeezed in between Mr. Bill and Joe and told Mr. Bill where to go. Mr. Bill forgot there were any speed laws or any traffic laws in Waloo as he sent his car forward. Granny gasped for breath. She declared they were in Northeast Waloo before they left the hotel.

"Stop at the corner, Bill," suggested Joe, as they drew near the red brick house, before which a curious policeman was sauntering, and Neddie Black was still playing ball. "We don't want them to know we're coming."

"I was going to!" muttered Mr. Bill indignantly. Joe should credit him with a little sense.

"You'll stay here, Granny!" hissed Joe, as he jumped from the car. "And Johnny, you mind your grandmother and don't make any more trouble for us. Come on, Bill!"

"I'll go with you," offered Charlie Deakin, his teeth chattering in his excitement.

"I--" began Johnny, but Joe turned to him fiercely.

"You shut up!" he said so sharply that Johnny did not dare to say another word.

"There's a policeman!" Granny told them in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, and her gnarled finger pointed tremblingly to the officer. "I suppose you'll let him go with you," she added with much scorn. She was shivering with excitement and fear.

Accompanied by the officer, Joe and Mr. Bill went up the steps. Mr. Bill rang the bell, and when no one answered it, Joe tried to open the door.

Mr. Bill kept his finger on the bell. Granny shivered at its shrill peal. But there was no response to it. Joe and Mr. Bill and the officer tried to break in the door, but its fibers and hinges were stronger than their muscles. Mr. Bill tried a window, and when he could not open it he shattered the gla.s.s with one blow of his hand. Granny and Norah and Johnny heard the clatter. They caught each other's hands. And still there was not a sound in the house.

"She can't be here!" Joe said hopelessly. "There isn't any one here!"

"We must make sure!" exclaimed Mr. Bill between his teeth, and he climbed through the window.

In a moment he had the door open, and Joe and the officer were clattering in. It was not worth while now to be quiet. The officer's flashlight showed them only empty rooms. Joe lighted matches and threw them aside as they flared out. He led the way through the lower floor.

"Some one has been here!" He pointed to a heap of cigar ashes beside a big chair.

"And here for some time if he smoked cigars enough to make that much ash," added the officer wisely.

"Come upstairs," begged Mr. Bill. "Never mind the ashes now!"

At last they reached the room in which Tessie had been locked. They were able to break in the door and the flashlight, the flaring matches showed them the bed, the old wardrobe and the bureau, which had been pulled from the wall. Mr. Bill ran to look behind it.

"Great Scott!" he exclaimed when he saw the open window. "Great Scott!"

he cried again when he saw a piece of blue crepe caught on a nail in the sill. It was from a woman's frock, and Mr. Bill stared at it. Tessie had been wearing a blue crepe when she disappeared. "She's been here!" he shouted to Joe, although he had no way of proving that the bit of blue crepe had ever been a part of Tessie's frock.

"And she got away!" Joe read the story of the open window, as he looked out and saw the roof of the porch below it. "She got out this way!" He dropped from the window, as Tessie had dropped, struck the porch roof, and slid down the post to look carefully over the yard. "Tess!" he called softly. "Tess! It's Joe Cary! She isn't here," he looked back to tell Mr. Bill. "But she must have got away all right!" He went around to join the others at the front door.

Another man joined them also, the irate owner of the red brick house, who wanted to know what the d.i.c.kens they were doing breaking into his place and making such a commotion?

"Who lived here?" demanded Mr. Bill before he answered one of the questions.

"I rented it day before yesterday to a man by the name of Smith,"

returned the owner, who never would have answered Mr. Bill if he had not been accompanied by a policeman. "A fat, white-headed fellow who wanted a quiet place for his sister. She had been at a sanitarium," and the owner touched his head significantly. He was the most surprised landlord in Waloo when he was told that the Queen of the Sunshine Islands must have been a prisoner in his house, and he exclaimed quickly that he knew nothing about any Frederic Pracht. He had rented the house to a man who had said his name was Smith--John Smith. He had taken it for an indefinite period and paid a month's rent. The house was furnished, so the new tenant had only to bring his personal baggage.

John Smith had seemed like a pleasant, honest man, and had talked in a nice way about his sister.

"And all the time he must have meant the Queen," he said, as if he could not believe the story Joe and Mr. Bill told him. "Sure, I read about her in the papers! She used to work in the Evergreen. My niece, Susie Blakeley, works there, too. She was all excited when they found a queen in the store. I wonder what she will say to this!" He took the money Mr.

Bill offered him to repair the broken window, and said again it was all right, and he was glad they hadn't found anything worse than they had.

He stared at his old house with dazed eyes. "Well, can you believe it,"

he murmured as they drove away and left him with Charlie Deakin and Neddie Black, who were more disappointed than they could ever say.

"What's the matter? Isn't Tessie there?" called Granny impatiently. She jumped out and ran heavily toward them. She could not wait in the car another second. "Where's Tessie?" she demanded.

"She got away!" explained Joe. "She got away from Pracht!"

"She did? Then why don't we go right back to the hotel and ask her where she's been?" Granny scuttled to the car. That was the sensible thing to do, not stand here and talk indefinitely. "Why are you waiting here when Tessie's gone home?"

"Why, indeed?" They tumbled into the car, and Mr. Bill drove back to the Waloo as he had driven away from it, without any regard for traffic laws or speed laws. They hurried into the hotel and up in the elevator, chattering excitedly. They ran along the corridor and into the royal suite.

"Tessie, you bad girl!" began Granny at the door. But she did not sound as if Tessie really had been a bad girl--she sounded loving and excited.

When she ran into the room she stopped. "She isn't here!" she exclaimed, frightened because Tessie was not there. "She isn't here!"

"She must be!" declared Mr. Bill, and he ran through the other rooms.

But Tessie was not in one of them. Mr. Bill's eager face fell. He had been so sure that Tessie would be there that he felt bewildered and indignant as well as frightened.

"Perhaps she hasn't had time to get here," suggested Joe forlornly, although he knew that Tessie had had plenty of time. All she had to do was to jump on a car, and she would be at the hotel in twenty minutes.

They had taken more than twenty minutes to search the house and drive back. He called up the hotel office to learn if any one had seen Tessie.

No one had. He turned to Mr. Bill with a questioning stare. Where was Tessie Gilfooly?

Mr. Bill shook his head. He wished he knew. And then he shook his broad shoulders and stared at Joe. "I'll find her!" he declared fiercely, with a confidence which was based on nothing sounder than desire.

"I'll find her!" contradicted Joe as fiercely.

"Deary me, where can she be?" wailed Granny. "It isn't like the Gilfoolys to go away like this! It never was like one of them but Pete!

I wish Tessie had never heard of this queen business!"

"So do I!" fervently agreed Joe. He looked at Mr. Bill, as if in some way he blamed him!

Mr. Bill said never a word, but he did flush quickly. Deep, in his heart, he did not wish that Tessie had never heard of the queen business. Although Tessie had been kidnaped and might be in danger he did not wish that, for if Tessie had never been a queen, there was every chance that Mr. Bill would never have known her. When she was selling aluminum, she was just one of the hundreds of girls who poured into the Evergreen every morning and out of the Evergreen every evening.

She was lost among the hundreds. But when Fate plucked her out of the industrial army, and showed her to Mr. Bill as a queen, he saw that she was fair and sweet and dear--how dear Mr. Bill had not quite realized until now. It made him furious to think of it now. You bet, he would find her!

"You go to bed, Granny, you and Johnny," suggested Joe. "We'll call you the minute we hear anything. You go to bed. You're dead tired!"

Granny was tired, but she could not go to sleep until she knew where Tessie was. She allowed Norah to lead her to her room and tuck her into the bed. She was too tired to resist. She was an old woman, she told Norah pitifully, and had lost her husband and seven children, but never in all of her life had she had had to go through anything like this. Why couldn't she have been kidnaped instead of Tessie?

Norah patted her wrinkled hand and crooned; "Poor Granny!" until Granny did fall into a troubled sleep.

Johnny refused to go to bed, but consented to lie on the davenport. His head had scarcely touched the pillow before he was asleep, too. Joe tramped up and down the room, while Mr. Bill slumped in a chair, his head in his hands. As Norah came out of the bedroom, the telephone rang and she caught the receiver. The two men jumped beside her.

"It's your mother." She nodded to Mr. Bill. "No, no news," she said through the transmitter. "Yes, we are all terribly anxious. We will let you know when we hear anything," she promised, for Mrs. Kingley had told her that she could not sleep unless she knew the little queen was safe.

"We were so fond of her, she was so pretty and simple and honest. I don't know any girl now who is so unaffected. You couldn't help but be fond of her. It doesn't seem possible that any one could carry her off in Waloo, does it? And in our car! It makes me frantic! I can't think what the police are doing. Mr. Kingley is frantic, too!"