"I think that's what the man was after last night."
"Not an ordinary burglar, for Iris declared he was a gentleman----"
"Gentlemen don't conduct themselves as----"
"You know what I mean! She said he was educated and cultured of speech and manner. Of course, he was a thief. He pretended he wanted the pin, but that was a blind. He was hunting the jewels."
"Well, _we'd_ better hunt Iris. I don't like her unexplained disappearance. Suppose we telephone to all the people we can think of, at whose homes she might be."
But this procedure, though including the Bowens and many other of Iris' intimate acquaintances, brought forth positively no results. Nobody had seen or heard from Iris that day.
At last they telephoned to Hughes, and the detective said he would come to Pellbrook at once.
When Iris realized that she had been actually kidnapped, her feelings were of anger, rather than of fright. The indignity of the thing loomed above her sense of danger or fear of personal injury. The little car, a landaulet, ran smoothly and rapidly, and as soon as they were well away from Pellbrook the stifling cloth was partially removed from her head, and Iris discovered that beside her was a young woman, whose face, though determined, was not at all awe-inspiring. She even smiled at Iris' furious expression, and said, "Now, now, what's the use? You may as well take it quietly."
"Take kidnapping quietly!" blazed Iris. "Would _you_?"
"If I couldn't help myself any more than you can, yes."
"Keep still! Too much chattering back there!" came a voice from the driver's seat, and a scowling face turned round for a moment.
"All right," retorted Iris' cheerful companion, "you mind your business, and I'll mind mine."
Then, she took the covering entirely off Iris' head, but at the same time she drew down the silk shades to the windows of the car.
"Sorry," she said, blithely, "but it must be did!"
"Where am I? Where am I going?" and Iris frowned at her.
"You dunno where you're going, but you're on your way," sang the strange girl, for she was little more than a girl. "Now, don'tee fight--just take it pleasant-like, and it will be lots better for you."
"I don't care for your advice, thank you; I ask you what it means that I am forcibly carried off in this way?"