simply. It was possible that she had actually gone away for a trip; but
it was more probable that she had not. He had had, of course, no means
of knowing; but the sort of peril that threatened her, his intuition
told him, was not such as to be diverted by the mere expedient of
absenting herself from New York temporarily; and, besides, she had said
that she would _fight_ it out. She could hardly do that in the _person_
of Marie LaSalle, or away from New York. She was clever, resourceful,
resolute and fearless--and those very traits opened a vista of
possibilities that left his mind staggering blindly as in a maze. She
was gone--and alone in the face of deadly menace. He remembered then
the curious, unnatural calmness underlying the mad whirling of his
brain at the thought that that was not literally true, that she was
not, nor would she ever be alone--while he lived. It was only a
question of _how_ he could help her. It had seemed almost certain that
the danger threatening her came from one of two sources--either from
those who were left of the Crime Club, relentless, savage for vengeance
on account of the ruin and disaster that had overtaken them; or else
from the Magpie, and behind the Magpie, massed like some Satanic
phalanx, every denizen of the underworld, for Silver Mag had
disappeared coincidently with Larry the Bat, coincidently with the
Magpie's attempted robbery of the supposed Henry LaSalle's safe, to
which plot she was held by the underworld to be a party, coincidently
with the dispersion of the Crime Club, _and coincidently with the
reappearance of the heiress Marie LaSalle_--and, further, Silver Mag
stood condemned to death in the Bad Lands as the accomplice of the Gray
Seal. But Silver Mag had disappeared. Had the underworld, prompted by
the Magpie, solved the riddle--did it know, or guess, or suspect that
Silver Mag was Marie LaSalle?

Which was it? The Crime Club, or the Magpie? Here again he could not