probable hour of her return. She had vanished without a word, except
a request to Keggs to tell the driver of her taxi to go to the
Thirty-Third Street subway.
'Must 'a' 'ad bad noos,' Keggs thought, 'because she were look'n' white
as a sheet.'
Mamie was sorry that Ruth had had bad news, but her departure certainly
helped to relieve the pressure of an appalling situation.
With the absence of Ruth and Mrs. Porter the bits of luck came to an
end. Try as she would, Mamie could discover no other silver linings in
the cloud-bank. And even these ameliorations of the disaster were only
temporary.
Ruth would return. Worse, Mrs. Porter would return. Like two Mother
Hubbards, they would go to the cupboard, and the cupboard would be
bare. And to her, Mamie, would fall the task of explanation.
The only explanation that occurred to her was that Steve had gone
suddenly mad. He had given no hint of his altruistic motives in the
hurried scrawl which she had found on the empty cot. He had merely said
that he had taken away William Bannister, but that 'it was all right.'
Why Steve should imagine that it was all right baffled Mamie. Anything
less all right she had never come across in a lifetime of disconcerting
experiences.
She was aware that things were not as they should be between Ruth and
Kirk, and the spectacle of the broken home had troubled her gentle
heart; but she failed to establish a connection between Kirk's
departure and Steve's midnight raid.
After devoting some ten minutes to steady brainwork she permitted
herself the indulgence of a few tears. She did not often behave in this
shockingly weak way, her role in life hitherto having been that of the
one calm person in a disrupted world. When her father had lost his job,
and the rent was due, and Brother Jim had fallen in the mud to the
detriment of his only suit of clothes, and Brothers Terence and Mike
had developed respectively a sore throat and a funny feeling in the
chest, she had remained dry-eyed and capable. Her father had cried, her
brother Jim had cried, her brother Terence had cried, and her brother
Mike had cried in a manner that made the weeping of the rest of the
family seem like the uncanny stillness of a summer night; but she had
not shed a tear.
Now, however, she gave way. She buried her little face on the pillow
which so brief a while before had been pressed by the round head of
William Bannister and mourned like a modern Niobe.
At the end of two minutes she rose, sniffing but courageous, herself
again. In her misery an idea had come to her. It was quite a simple and
obvious idea, but till now it had eluded her.
She would go round to the studio and see Kirk. After all, it was his
affair as much as anybody else's, and she had a feeling that it would
be easier to break the news to him than to Ruth and Mrs. Porter.
She washed her eyes, put on her hat, and set out.
Luck, however, was not running her way that morning. Arriving at the
studio, she rang the bell, and rang and rang again without result
