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!