CHAPTER I.

THROUGH LOCKED DOORS.

“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.”

James Mallory and Paul Savage, proprietors of the new summer hotel, the Amsterdam—situated on a picturesque promontory on the Delaware coast, with the broad Atlantic stretching away from its very foundation walls—faced each other blankly in their private office.

It was well on in the morning, and two weeks after the opening of the hotel, and judicious advertising had resulted in the house being comfortably full already. The rooms—some single, but mostly en suite—had been engaged largely in advance, and the guests were practically all of the well-to-do class, with a fair sprinkling of very wealthy.

Mrs. de Puyster van Dietrich was not the only multimillionaire, for there were several others.

Mallory was a stout, imposing-looking man, always immaculately attired, and with a suave manner that had perhaps led in the first place to his becoming a “promoter.” Assuredly it had helped him when fairly launched in that interesting occupation. His very appearance was a guarantee that the company he represented was sound and certain to pay healthy dividends to the stockholders.

Paul Savage, his partner, was a cadaverous individual, with many lines about his lank jaw and the hunted look in his deep-set eyes which one often sees in the hard-working business man, whose talent is mainly for detail.

The two men had been associated in various schemes for years. Some of them had turned out well, while others had not. Now they had plunged on this hotel scheme, got a company behind them, and were hoping that, when the time came for them to “unload,” they would find themselves with enough money to rest on their oars while selecting some new enterprise, which would promise even better than this.

On this morning, Mallory had been sitting behind his desk, swelling with satis