take up the case and look into it?"

She made her appeal so winsomely that it would have been difficult
to resist even if it had not promised to prove important.

"I should be glad to take up the matter," replied Craig, quickly,
adding, "if Mr. Barnes will let me."

"Oh, he must!" she cried. "I haven't spoken to father, but I know
that he would approve of it. I know he thinks I haven't any head
for business, just because I wasn't born a boy. I want to prove to
him that I can protect the companies interests. And Mr. Barnes--
why, of course he will approve."

She said it with an assurance that made me wonder. It was only
then that I recollected that it had been one of the excuses for
printing her picture in the society columns of the Star so often
that the pretty daughter of the president of the Continental was
being ardently wooed by two of the company's younger officials.
Granville Barnes himself was one. The other was Rodman Lane, the
young general manager. I wished now that I had paid more attention
to the society news. Perhaps I should have been in a better
position to judge which of them it was whom she really had chosen.
As it was, two questions presented themselves to me. Was it
Barnes? And had Barnes really been the victim of an attack--or of
an accident?

Kennedy may have been thinking the problems over, but he gave no
evidence of it. He threw on his hat and coat, and was ready in a
moment to be driven in Miss Euston's car to the hospital.