Mrs. Halloran stopped there because she had to blow her nose.
Her narrative style was the kind that needs close following. She’d had it. She rolled her eyes around at us as a finale, thrilled horror added to her excitement.
“You don’t think somebody could-a murdered her for her ticket and stuck her dead body someplace in that station, do you?”
“We better get in touch with the hospitals, we better get in touch with the hospitals, all right.” Mr. Waller was all action. “They do it from the Missing Persons.”
For the third time since I had moved there a call to the police department was put in from Mrs. Garr’s house.
—
FROM MR. WALLER’S EFFORTS at our end of the line I gathered that the police department wasn’t much interested in the unexplained absence of Mrs. Garr.
“Yes, she is a missing person,” Mr. Waller reiterated. “She’s been missin’ since last Friday night . . . No, she ain’t a young lady. She’s a old lady. Maybe sixty, sixty-five . . . No, she didn’t go visitin’ relatives. She ain’t got but one relative, and she’s right here havin’ fits now. This Mrs. Garr was goin’ to Chicago on Friday, see, but she never got on the train . . . No, she didn’t get lost in Chicago. She never got on the train . . . No, I don’t know how many trains there was.”
He wiped perspiration from his face when he was done.
“Dumbheads. What do they think, I think it’s fun to report missing persons? Maybe there was two trains run on that excursion, though.”
“I wonder if that could be it. It would be more likely for her to get lost in Chicago than in Gilling City.”
“Except that I saw her on the corner after train time Friday,” put in Mr. Grant obstinately.
If ever a situation was well talked over, that one was. We were still at it when Mr. Kistler came home at midnight. Mr. Buffingham came home around one. They both added themselves to the party, but we couldn’t rouse them to our pitch of interest. They just weren’t worried.
The two policemen came almost on Mr. Buffingham’s heels. They were the same two men we’d had the Friday before: Jerry and Red; I felt we were practically friends, but they tramped into my living room sourly.
“Now what’ve you got going on around here? More monkey business?”
Mrs. Halloran appointed herself spokesman.
By that time, she had worked herself close to hysterics. I didn’t see how the policemen could make much sense out of her recital, but they’d probably had the outline of the story from the officer Mr. Waller had talked to on the telephone. They were definitely bored.
“Aw, she’ll turn up. Maybe she does miss the train, but she’s all set for a visit, so she goes somewheres else, see? She’s of age, ain’t she? She’s on her own, ain’t she? There isn’t any reason why she should report to you where she goes, is there?”
Mr. Grant trained his blinks on the policemen.
“I have lived in this house for four years, and I have never known her to leave it overnight before.”
“Well, she did now. She said she was goin’ to Chicago, didn’t she? I bet she went. Her excursion ticket wasn’t any good because she missed the train, so she gets another and takes a reg’lar train.”
“Then there wasn’t a second section?” Mr. Kistler had arrived at the thoughtful-interest stage.
“Naw, there was only one section. These excursions ain’t as popular as they was.”
Miss Sands had a word to put in. “Then she never went. She was awful close.”
“Okay, lady, then you tell us where she is.” Jerry was still bored. “She ain’t in a hospital; there ain’t been an unknown lady in a hospital this week. She ain’t in the morgue. She ain’t in jail.”
“She may have been hit by a car, picked up by the driver, and cared for in his home,” contributed Mr. Kistler with quickening eyes, “or else dumped, dead, out in the country somewhere.”
Mrs. Halloran shrieked and fell over backward in her chair. She came to very quickly, though. She hadn’t had any attention for almost two minutes, but on the other hand she didn’t want to miss anything.
“Well, we’ll keep an eye out,” Jerry promised us largely as he rose to go.
“Wait a minute, Jerry,” asked Mr. Kistler, still contemplative. “There doesn’t seem much use in going over the house again; that’s been done since she left, thanks to Mrs. Dacres. But there’s one place we didn’t look, remember? That kitchen downstairs.”
“Aw nuts.”
“But the key is gone,” I said, picking up Mr. Kistler’s idea. “Suppose she’d left her ticket there, come back for it, and fallen or become ill—she might be lying there sick—or dead, even!”
“Then how did it get locked again?” asked Jerry reasonably.
“Did you try to see if it was locked?” asked Mr. Kistler quickly.
“Hell, sure I did. Sure. Anyhow, I think I did.” Jerry’s voice, certain at first, grew a trifle less certain. “Okay, I’ll take another look.”
Once more nine people trailed down the cellar stairs in disorder, the policeman, ahead, switching on the cellar light from the head of the stairs.
The coldness of the basement, in contrast to the June warmth above, struck our flesh with chill. The far reaches of the furnace room, with only one bulb to light them, were shadowed. The place smelled worse than ever. Mrs. Tewman, I thought, had certainly been doing as little cleaning as Mrs. Waller said she had. And then, of course, those animals.
Jerry’s hand closed on the knob of the kitchen door.
Inside the room, the dog growled.
The door didn’t open.
Jerry turned triumphantly to us.
“Okay? It’s locked, all right. Satisfied now?”
“No. No, I’m not satisfied.” Mr. Kistler had the nose-to-the-trail look he’d worn the morning Mr. Buffingham’s son was taken. “I think you should break that door in.”
“Aw, listen, buddy.”
“We’ll vote on it. If Mrs. Garr comes home and kicks up
