"Who was the last visitor? He might throw some light upon this dark, evil subject. Who was he?" abruptly demanded Aaron Rockharrt.
"I do not know. No one seems to know. Jasper says he never saw him before, nor ever heard his name."
"Conspiracy! Treason! Murder!" interrupted Aaron Rockharrt. "The governor-elect has been decoyed away from the house by that last caller, and has been murdered! And the people in the house may not be as innocent or ignorant as they pretend to be. I will go out and take counsel with the committee," he said, and he turned and strode out of the drawing room.
When he reached the hall, however, he found that the officials had gone to pursue their search for the missing man elsewhere. The men of his own party were nowhere to be seen. The porter, Jasper, was the only occupant of the hall, and Aaron Rockharrt opened the hall door and walked out. The military and civil escort were still on parade before the house, waiting for the governor-elect.
Mr. Rockharrt's carriage was standing before the door. He entered it and ordered the coachman to drive to police headquarters.
The hour for the inauguration of the new governor was approaching. The procession to the State house should have been in motion by this time. The people on the sidewalks, at the doors and windows, on the balconies, and on the roofs, all along the line of march, were beginning to be weary of waiting.
The officials who had the ceremonies of the occasion in hand waited until three o'clock in the afternoon, and then, as the governor-elect was nowhere to be found, as the necessity was imminent, the inaugural procession was ordered to begin its march.
"Where is he? Where is Rothsay?" demanded the spectators one of the other.
No one knew. No one had seen him. No one could, therefore, answer.
When the procession reached the State house, the lieutenant-governor, Kennelm Kennedy, was sworn in, and the military companies and the civic societies and the spectators all dispersed.
But where was the governor? That was the question of the hour. Why had he not been inaugurated? was asked by everybody of everybody else. The secret of his total and unexplained disappearance had not, indeed, been closely kept. His intimate friends, his household servants and the public officials knew it, but the general public did not.