The door closed a second later and the key clicked.  Then came the shooting of a bolt, a short scuffling of feet, and the silence of the dead reigned over the strange house.  Overcome with dread, the occupants of the room uttered no word, no sound for what seemed to them an hour.  Then Mrs. Garrison, real tenderness in her voice, called softly to her daughter.

“Darling, can you find me in this darkness?  Come to me.  Let me hold you close in my arms, Dorothy, poor, poor child.”

But there was no response to the appeal, nor to a second and a third call.  The mother sprang to her feet in sudden terror, her heart fluttering wildly.

“Henry!  Are you here?  Where is—­what nas happened to Dorothy?” she cried.  A trembling old man and a frantic woman bumped against each other in the darkness and the search began.  There were but two people in the room!  Following this alarming discovery one of these persons swooned and the other battered, like a madman, against the heavy, stubborn door.

Far away in the night bowled a carriage drawn by sturdy horses.  The clouds broke and the vain fell.  Thunder and lightning ran rampant in the skies, but nothing served to lessen the speed of that swift flight over the highways leading into the sleep-ridden country.  Inside the cab, not the one in which Dorothy Garrison had begun her journey to the altar, but another and less pretentious, sat the grim desperado and a half-dead woman.  Whither they flew no one knew save the man who held the reins over the plunging horses.  How long their journey—­well, it was to have an end.

True to the promise made by the bandit, a clattering band of horsemen dashed up to the lonely house at the break of dawn.  They were led by Prince Ugo Ravorelli, dishevelled, half-crazed.  A shivering woman in silks and a cowering old man sobbed with joy when the rescuers burst through the door.  Tacked to a panel in the door was an ominous, ghost-like paper on which was printed the following message from the night just gone: 

“In time the one who is missing shall be returned to the arms of her mother, absolutely unharmed.  She will be well cared for by those who have her in charge.  After a reasonable length of time her friends will be informed as to the terms on which she may be restored to them.”

Mrs. Garrison, more dead than alive, was conveyed to her home in the Avenue Louise, there to recover her strength with astonishing quickness.  This vastly purposeful, indomitable woman, before many hours had passed, was calmly listening to plans for the capture of her daring abductors and the release of her daughter.  Friends, overcome with the horror of the hour, flocked to her aid and comfort; the government offered its assistance and the police went to work as one massive sleuth-hound.  Newspapers all over the world fairly staggered under the burden of news they carried to their readers, and people everywhere stood aghast at the most audacious outrage in the annals of latter-day crime.