“Gone. Nobody knows where. But I’m going to look for him. I have a good description of him.”
The next few days brought forth little that was new. Larry kept relentlessly on the trail of Parloti, as did the police.
Though the young reporter did not visit the suspected man openly, he hung about his hotel, trailed and followed him when he went out, and kept so close a watch over the Italian that the quarry became nervously indignant.
“When are you going to let me alone?” he cried to Larry, one afternoon, turning suddenly on the reporter.
“When you tell me what I want to know,” was the calm answer.
“But I know nothing, I tell you! I have not the stolen boy! If I had, would I remain openly here as I do?”
That was rather a poser for Larry. He did not know what to say. But still he kept his watch on Parloti.
Thinking the matter over calmly, Larry was forced to admit that one weak link of the chain that he sought to forge about Parloti was the fact that the man stayed on at his hotel openly, in spite of the suspicion against him.
“If he’s guilty I should think he’d escape at the first opportunity,” said the city editor, while talking over the case with Larry.
“Perhaps he knows that if he tried to do that he’d be arrested,” suggested the young reporter. “Flight would be an evidence of guilt, and Nyler is keeping a close watch on him. So am I.”
“And he doesn’t show the least sign of going away?”
“Not the least. Lots of reporters from other papers have interviewed him, and, though he admits that he is not on friendly terms with Madame Androletti, he says he knows nothing about the taking away of the boy.”
“Because, he says, that the fortune she has is rightfully his, and he has brought suit to recover it. But he was defeated in the Italian courts. He says he will yet have justice, but he denies that he would try to get it through taking away a little boy.”
“Well, I don’t know what to think. I believe Parloti had a hand in the matter, in spite of what he says. But it’s like the case of the bank mystery. I might be mistaken. And there’s another point in this case like that Wall Street robbery.”
“It’s this: If Parloti is guilty, the fact of his staying here, and facing the music, and his constant denials, prove him a good actor, just as that bank clerk was, in staying in the bank when he had hidden the million away.”