THE GIRL KIDNAPER, OR, NICK CARTER'S UP-TO-DATE CLEW

Excerpt: ??The thing seems impossible!? ?Yet it?s true.? ?You mean to tell me that??? ?I mean to tell you that Mrs. de Puyster van Dietrich, who retired to her room in this hotel last night at eleven o?clock, was not there this morning when her maid went to call her, and that her doors were all bolted and locked, with the keys inside.? ?What about the windows?? ?Mrs. van Dietrich?s rooms are on the fourth floor.? ?Well?? ?She did not jump out, Mallory, if that?s what you mean. They overlook the sea, and there are jagged rocks immediately beneath her windows. She would surely have been killed if she had gone that way. Anyhow, she is a well-balanced woman, who enjoys life, and a multimillionaire. Why should she commit suicide?? ?I don?t know why she should, Savage. That?s nothing. Seventy-five out of a hundred suicides seem to have no good reason behind them?until investigation is made afterward.? ?She did not jump out of the window, I tell you.? ?Perhaps she fell out,? suggested Mallory, sticking to his guns. ?She neither jumped nor fell out,? snapped the other. ?The rocks would tell the story if she had.?"