“They’re kidnapping her, without a doubt,” he said slowly.  For a moment he was like one struck stupid.  Slowly he turned to the dock, looking up and down its orderly but unprepossessing clutter.  Dim lights shone here and there, and a few hands were at work at the farther end.  The dull silence, the unresponsive preoccupation of whatever life was in sight, made it all seem as remote from him and from this tragedy as from the stars.

In fact, it was impersonal and remote to such a degree that Hambleton’s practical mind, halted yet an instant, in doubt whether there were not some plausible explanation.  The thought came back to him suddenly that the motor-car must be somewhere in the neighborhood if his conclusion were correct.

On the instant his brain became active again.  It did not take long, as a matter of fact, to find the car; though when he stumbled on it, turned about and neatly stowed away close beside the partitioning wall, he gave a start.  It was such a tangible evidence of what had threatened to grow vague and unreal on his hands.  He squeezed himself into the narrow space between it and the wall, finally thrusting his head under the curtains of the tonneau.

It was high and dry, empty as last year’s cockleshell.  Not a sign of life, not a loose object of any kind except a filmy thing which Hambleton found himself observing thoughtfully.  At last he picked it up—­a long, mist-like veil.  He spread it out, held it gingerly between a thumb and finger of each hand, and continued to look at it abstractedly.  Part of it was clean and whole, dainty as only a bit of woman’s finery can be; but one end of it was torn and twisted and stretched out of all semblance to itself.  Moreover, it was dirty, as if it had been ground under a muddy heel.  It was, in its way, a shrieking evidence of violence, of unrighteous struggle.  Hambleton folded the scarf carefully, with its edges together, and put it in his pocket.  Jimmy’s actions from this time on had an incentive and a spirit that had before been lacking.  He noted again the number of the car, and returned to the edge of the dock to observe the yacht.  She had steamed up river a little way for some reason known only to herself, and was now turning very slowly.  She was but faintly lighted, and would pass for some pleasure craft just coming home.  But Jim knew better.  He could, at last, put two and two together.  He would follow the Face—­indeed, he could not help following it.  In him had begun that divine experience of youth—­of youth essentially, whether it come in early years or late—­of being carried off his feet by a spirit not himself.  He ran like a young athlete down the dock to the nearest workman, evolving schemes as he went.

The dock-hand apathetically trundled a small keg from one pile of freight to another, wiped his hands on his trousers, took a dry pipe out of his pocket, and looked vacantly up the river before he replied to Hambleton’s question.