“When you get those files back from Scotland Yard, I would like the last known addresses of their parents. You know it is possible that the parents of the other girls went to the authorities.”
“It’s possible,” Dunham admitted, stroking his mustache. “The feud runs deep. I suppose I must communicate with the Yard over this. I don’t want you gentlemen to think we never work for them, but I cannot guarantee their cooperation. I hope Swanson listens to reason. I mean, he has only the one victim, but we have five, and we were first. We have precedence. The case should be ours.”
“Come, Thomas,” Barker said, easing out of his chair. “Let us go back to the Charity Organization Society and ask some questions.”
“The Charity Organization Society?” the inspector repeated.
“What of it?” Barker asked.
“I believe both the Rices and the Goldsteins went through that organization when they first came here. They said so.”
“You did not mention it earlier.”
“Slipped my mind. I mean, it didn’t seem relevant. Is there a connection?”
“The missing girl’s mother works there.”
Dunham said nothing but nodded solemnly.
“Thank you, Inspector. Come, lad. We’ve got our work cut out for us.”
There was still a pall over the offices of the Charity Organization Society, where the women had assembled even though it was a Saturday, in hope of getting some word about Gwendolyn DeVere. When we entered, the girl’s mother came forward through the double line of desks. Hypatia DeVere was no longer bedraggled, but her face was very pale and there were dark circles under her eyes. She must have spent the night in torment.
“Have you found anything?” she asked anxiously.
“No, ma’am,” Barker said solemnly. “We circled the district until midnight and showed a photograph from the Carricks to dozens of people. I suspect we shall receive some form of communique from her abductors soon, and, of course, Scotland Yard shall begin their search in earnest today as well.”
“They have already been here,” Miss Hill said, coming up beside the major’s wife. “An Inspector Swanson came in not a quarter hour ago.”
“Did he make any comment?” my employer asked.
“He was not pleased that we had hired a private agent,” Mrs. DeVere said, “but he seemed to know you. Why do you think we might hear from my daughter’s abductors?”
“If they originally had hopes of using her for the white slave trade, the quality of her clothing would have told them that she would be worth more for ransom.”
“Do you think so?” the poor woman asked, actually clutching Barker’s arm. “You think she might be ransomed? I have money of my own. I would give anything to have her back.”
“I make no promises, madam,” Barker said cautiously. “I merely state that white slavers are motivated by greed and would be intelligent enough to know that more money could be made by selling her back to you.”
“And if it isn’t a white slave ring?” Miss Hill asked.
“Then we must change our tactics,” Barker responded, evading the question. “We will know by the end of the day, I expect. Might I ask some questions? Mrs. DeVere, what do you remember about yesterday morning before the disappearance?”
“It was a typical day with Gwendolyn. I only bring her occasionally. I wanted to teach her the importance of doing charitable work and to appreciate how well off we are.”
“What are your duties here?” Barker asked.
“I am the bookkeeper. I have a good head for figures, and a great deal of money passes through the C.O.S.”
“We are not a charity, ourselves, although we provide immediate needs, such as blankets and coal,” Miss Hill explained. “Our primary duty is to see that donations from private individuals are evenly distributed among charitable organizations. It would be tragic if one group, such as the Salvation Army, receives an abundance of funds while another, like the Poplar Orphanage, receives nothing and must close its doors. We also see that the deserving poor are conveyed to the best institutions to meet their needs.”
“I see,” Barker responded, turning to Mrs. DeVere. “So what did the wee girl do here while you were busy keeping the books?”
I noticed Miss Hill’s lips broaden a little. Barker is a born Scot, but twenty years in the East and five in London had worn the edges off his accent. I hadn’t heard the phrase “wee girl” anywhere save the novels of Walter Scott.
“Gwendolyn is a good girl and she amuses herself,” her mother explained. “She is becoming quite a young lady. Sometimes she helps Miss Levy and the other girls. She has slipped off before, but always came back within a half hour. She always, always came back.”
“Is there any place she might have gone, anyone she knew in the area?”
“No, sir. No one in particular that I know of.”
“Did she have a desk at which she sat?” Barker asked.
“Yes, sir. That one,” Mrs. DeVere answered, indicating one at the far back of the room. As a group we all moved toward it. It was a smaller desk, not quite in keeping with the others. It looked derelict, and I felt sorry for the girl not merely for what had happened to her now but for being taken here in order to be shown her civic duty. She must have been bored to tears, I thought.
Barker began opening the drawers of the desk, but all he discovered was some paper, a pencil, and a book of fairy stories. The Guv held up the top sheet of paper to the light and scrutinized it, but there were no marks leftover from the sheet that had been on top of it.
“Nothing,” he said. There was a back door not far from the desk. Barker crossed to it and gave the handle a turn. It would not open.
“It is always locked,” Miss Hill stated. “We had thieves one morning a few years ago who stole some blankets. We’ve kept it locked ever since.”
“Is there any other way of egress?”
“No, sir.”
“Were the windows open yesterday morning?”
“Yes, but the ground slopes down from the front,” Miss Hill explained. “It is eight feet to the ground here and ten from the windows in my office.”
Barker flipped the latch on the window and lifted it. There was a bare alley beside it, but Miss Hill’s assessment of the height was correct. A flight of steps led up to the locked back door.
“If she slipped over the sill and hung by the ledge, she might have been able to drop without hurting herself,” I said.
“We would have seen her,” Miss Levy pointed out.
“Was it busy yesterday morning?” Barker asked.
“Very busy,” Miss Hill admitted. “But never so busy as to not see a twelve-year-old girl climbing out the window.”
“Is there a water closet in the building?”
“There is. We have had it installed.” She led us to the small room and we looked in. There was a window here as well, but it was high on the wall, too high for a child to reach.
“So, it would appear that the only way Miss DeVere could have left was through the front door. Did anyone see her near it?”
“I sit at the first desk,” Miss Levy explained. “And I made certain Gwendolyn did not get by. She’s gone out before, you see.”
“You make it sound as if she escaped, Mr. Barker,” Hypatia DeVere objected.
“It seems far more likely that she walked out of here than that a group of white slavers entered and somehow spirited her away under your very noses.”
“One minute she was there and the next she was not,” Miss Levy said.
“It sounds like a stage magician’s trick,” I said.
Mrs. Carrick entered then and looked at the group of us. “Has anything happened?” she asked.
“We’re trying to discover how Gwendolyn got out,” Miss Levy explained.
