The house of the missing

High on the roof of the apartment house, in the darkness, the insatiable, ceaseless murmur of the city came hushed and muted to my ears. I leaned against the parapet, staring out over the glow of clashing lights below and letting the breeze touch my face with its gentle fingers. It had a soothing influence of which I was badly in need that night. For I had come to the end of two months of ceaseless search—and consistent, unvarying failure.

I had not dared to lose faith that somewhere down there, in that brimming human river, still existed the sweetest little sister a fellow ever had. It was possible even that one of the little dots now passing in the street far below knew where she was and what her fate had been. But I, who would have given the aching heart out of my body to find her, could not tell. I could only remember her sweetness; her little wide-eyed glances; her happy, bubbling laughter and her adorable innocence.

Perhaps fate had been envious of our happiness together, for it had played us the cruellest of tricks, wresting my little sister away to God knew what horrors and leaving me with a ceaseless, gnawing grief. My imagination is none too vivid, perhaps, at ordinary times, but during those two months I had had to school it rigidly. A mind that is balked of a great desire, turns on itself like a scorpion. But it did not help my search to picture scenes in which she might be the victim, scenes going on even at that moment and just around the corner perhaps. And madness lay that way, as I had long since had cause to realize.

Looking back, there on the roof, it seemed a weary waste of years since that morning, only two months before, when she came laughing, dancing into my studio to ask her favor. A Mrs. Furneau, whom I knew slightly, had offered to drive her into New York that day, to a luncheon party at the house of some friends and a matinée afterwards. Margaret was just seventeen, with an innocent, slender, childlike beauty that set me nearly crazy in my efforts to transfer it to canvas. She had come home for the summer holidays, and as usual her dainty wishes were my law. This party was to be a “Special treat, please!” So I had let her go.

I gazed down at the darkened city, and for the thousand-and-first time went wearily over the events of that terrible time, seeking for the faintest clew.

The first intimation that I had had of impending tragedy had come from Mrs. Furneau, the woman who had taken Margaret into New York. I had been working hard on a portrait and had hardly missed the child. But about seven o’clock, an hour after she should have been home, the telephone rang and a gasping voice came to me over the long-distance wire: “Is Margaret with you? Did she come home?”

Mrs. Furneau sounded nearly distracted, but I had managed to drag the details out of her at length. They had gone to the luncheon and then to the matinée in a party, she told me. A little after five, they had left the others and started for home in Mrs. Furneau’s car. Then, at 34th Street, Margaret had begged for ten minutes in which to do some shopping in one of the big stores near by. Mrs. Furneau had agreed to wait for her, and had pulled up in front of the store while Margaret got out and ran inside. And that was all!

Mrs. Furneau had waited for nearly half an hour, and then, as she could see that the store was closing for the night, had gone inside to look for her. Not finding her, she had returned to the car. But Margaret had not come out, according to Mrs. Furneau’s chauffeur. So she went back again and searched the nearly empty store thoroughly this time. But she could learn nothing—could find no one who had even seen the child. Margaret had certainly entered the store, for the older woman said she had watched her graceful figure until it passed through the revolving doors. But after that she had vanished!

Thinking that Margaret might have met and talked with friends or gone to another store in search of what she wanted, Mrs. Furneau had waited in the car for nearly an hour more. By that time all the stores were closed. And besides, Margaret was a considerate child and would never have stayed away so long of her own volition without telling her hostess. Mrs. Furneau became really frightened then and telephoned to me.

Half an hour later I met her in New York. She repeated the details of Margaret’s disappearance and we talked over possibilities, but there was no clew to work on, as to what could have become of my little sister. We called up all the friends she had in New York that I knew about, but could learn nothing. And there was very little that I could do that night. The store workers were scattered to the four winds by that time.

So I had given all the details of the disappearance to the police, and after sending Mrs. Furneau home—she was frightened and tired out—I went to a hotel myself, so that I could be close at hand if the police wanted me.

As long as I live the recollection of that night will be vivid in my memory. Hour after hour I paced the floor, stopping every ten minutes or so to ring up my house, only to learn from the frightened servants that there was no news. Margaret had not returned. And at last the gray dawn crept into the room and found me still fully dressed and still pacing back and forth.

The store opened at nine, and at that hour Mrs. Furneau, who had come into town again to help, joined me. We went through the store together and questioned the workers—door-men, floor-walkers, salesgirls—every one. But we could learn nothing. There was simply no trace of any kind.

And another hasty telephone call told me that there was no news of my little sister at home.

That night and morning had been the beginning of two months of fear that haunted me like the terrible figments of a nightmare. At first, the number of investigations that suggested themselves, among the people in the store and among Margaret’s friends, had kept my mind occupied and kept hope alive that nothing serious had happened to the child. Then there had been the hospitals to search and city officials to interview, to say nothing of social workers and charitable organizations. Mrs. Furneau spent days with me, helping in the search. But as time passed and we could learn nothing, despair settled on me like a choking cloud, and with it an unreasonable sense of resentment towards Mrs. Furneau for her part in it all. I did my best to conceal it; but her intuition must have told her that there was something wrong, and after a week or so she gave up the search and I continued my efforts alone.

But the days grew into weeks and the combined efforts of the police, the best detective agencies in the country, and every other agency that money and determination could press into the service, failed to find a shadow of a trace, until at length other crimes and an epidemic of disappearances among young Society girls distracted their attention and I continued the search alone.

Hope dies hard; and there was always the chance that the child might make her way home again, or that I might hear of her or from her in some roundabout way; for at least her body had not been found. But after two months of utterly unsuccessful search, almost continuous by day and night, I was pretty desperate now, standing up there on the roof of the building in New York in which I had taken an apartment.

Everything else had been dropped and I had moved to New York. I had been in queer places and seen queer sights during those eight weeks. I had pierced the outer, commonplace integument of a great city—the shifting scene of blank, reserved humanity that meets the casual eye—and had been caught up and swept nearly off my feet once or twice in the seething welter of passion and crime that swells and ebbs beneath the city’s impassive exterior.

But of the slip of a girl I sought and now almost dreaded to find I could learn—nothing.

Stretching away below me as I watched, the city crouched purring, like some great animal motionless and watchful. I hated it actively for what it had done to me, longing to tear out its secret by violence, if need be. But after a while sanity slowly returned and the momentary madness faded. I can only say in excuse that the gnawing anxiety of those two months must have somewhat undermined a pretty normal point of view.

But with returning sanity came a slow resolve. Up to now I had been seeking blindly, with no plan—no definite aim, no thought of the future. From now on I vowed that my life should be given up to the search; that nothing should interfere with it; that only death or success should put an end to it. The resolve brought me a curious sense of peace. That much I could do—even though it were all I could do. But that much should be done.

With the thought I turned away from the parapet to go to my rooms below and try to lay out some sort of a campaign for the future. As I turned a touch fell upon my arm and I found Larry standing beside me. In the dim light from the open doorway that led to the roof I could detect the half-veiled pity in his eyes.

I had acquired Larry a couple of weeks before, or rather had had him more or less thrust upon me, and had not regretted it.

Early in the search I bought a small light car and scoured the city night after night in it, in the hope of catching a glimpse of Margaret. One night I had been driving slowly along the Bowery. It was very late and the long, wide, cobbled street under the L structure was deserted. But as I came to a corner, Larry darted out of a side street, yanked open the rear door of the car and dropped into the obscurity of the tonneau behind me, with “For God’s sake, d-r-r-rive on, sor. It’s half a dozen of them gangsters is after me!”

The sheer impudence of it took my breath away for a moment, and with the sudden natural impulse of a sporting chance for the hunted thing, I stood on the accelerator and whisked around a corner and out of sight before it came home to me that I was probably defeating the ends of justice. Then, too, there had been a quality of warmth and a hint of laughter in the rich brogue of the speaker that appealed to me and seemed to lift him out of the common run of malefactors.

Once committed, however, I turned a lot more corners and put a good bit of the city between us and his pursuers before I pulled into the curb and turned to have it out with my “fare.”

He forestalled me. He jumped to his feet at once. “Do but wait now, sor, and lave me have a look at ye!” said he.

Surprise and wrathful amazement kept me silent for a moment while he stared into my face. Then just as I was preparing to give him an extensive and unvarnished account of what I thought of him and his impudence, he slapped his thigh, and leaning forward took my hand and touched the top of his head with it, in a queer old-fashioned gesture.

“Faith, sor, I knew ut! You’re the man for me and I’m your man from this day forth. See now, tell me what it is you want in the world and I’ll get it ye. Ye have the look of a seeker, sor. Tell me what it is ye seek and I’ll find it. There now!”