If Mrs. Porter had been Steve, she would probably have said “For the love of Mike!” at this point. Being herself, she merely repeated the butler’s last words.
“If I may be allowed to say so, madam, I think that there must have been trouble at Mrs. Bannister’s. A telephone-call came from her very early this morning for Mrs. Winfield which caused Mrs. Winfield to rise and leave in a taximeter-cab in an extreme hurry. If I might be allowed to suggest it, it is probably a case of serious illness. Mrs. Winfield was looking very disturbed.”
“H’m!” said Mrs. Porter. The exclamation was one of disappointment rather than of apprehension. Sudden illnesses at the Bailey home did not stir her, but she was annoyed that her recital of the squelching of the publishers would have to wait.
She went upstairs. Her intention was to look in at the nursery and satisfy herself that all was well with William Bannister. She had given Mamie specific instructions as to his care on her departure; but you never knew. Perhaps her keen eye might be able to detect some deviation from the rules she had laid down.
It detected one at once. The nursery was empty. According to schedule, the child should have been taking his bath.
She went downstairs again. Keggs was waiting in the hall. He had foreseen this return. He had allowed her to go upstairs with his story but half heard because that appealed to his artistic sense. This story, to his mind, was too good to be bolted at a sitting; it was the ideal serial.
“Keggs.”
“Madam?”
“Where is Master William?”
“I fear I do not know, madam.”
“When did he go out? It is seven o’clock; he should have been in an hour ago.”
“I have been making inquiries, madam, and I regret to inform you that nobody appears to have seen Master William all day.”
“What?”
“It not being my place to follow his movements, I was unaware of this until quite recently, but from conversation with the other domestics, I find that he seems to have disappeared!”
“Disappeared?”
A glow of enjoyment such as he had sometimes experienced when the ticker at the Cadillac Hotel informed him that the man he had backed in some San Francisco fight had upset his opponent for the count began to permeate Keggs.
“Disappeared, madam,” he repeated.
“Perhaps Mrs. Winfield took him with her to Tuxedo.”
“No, madam. Mrs. Winfield was alone. I was present when she drove away.”
“Send Mamie to me at once,” said Mrs. Porter.
Keggs could have whooped with delight had not such an action seemed to him likely to prejudice his chances of retaining a good situation. He contented himself with wriggling ecstatically. “The young person is not in the house, madam.”
“Not in the house? What business has she to be out? Where is she?”
“I could not tell you, madam.” Keggs paused, reluctant to deal the final blow, as a child lingers lovingly over the last lick of ice-cream in a cone. “I last saw her at about five o’clock, driving off with Mr. Winfield in an automobile.”
“What!”
Keggs was content. His climax had not missed fire. Its staggering effect was plain on the face of his hearer. For once Mrs. Porter’s poise had deserted her. Her one word had been a scream.
“She did not tell me her destination, madam,” went on Keggs, making all that could be made of what was left of the situation after its artistic finish. “She came in and packed a suitcase and went out again and joined Mr. Winfield in the automobile, and they drove off together.”
Mrs. Porter recovered herself. This was a matter which called for silent meditation, not for chitchat with a garrulous butler.
“That will do, Keggs.”
“Very good, madam.”
Keggs withdrew to his pantry, well pleased. He considered that he had done himself justice as a raconteur. He had not spoiled a good story in the telling.
Mrs. Porter went to her room and sat down to think. She was a woman of action, and she soon reached a decision.
The errant pair must be followed, and at once. Her great mind, playing over the situation like a searchlight, detected a connection between this elopement and the disappearance of William Bannister. She had long since marked Kirk down as a malcontent, and she now labelled the absent Mamie as a snake in the grass who had feigned submission to her rule, while meditating all the time the theft of the child and the elopement with Kirk. She had placed the same construction on Mamie’s departure with Kirk as had Mr. Penway, showing that it is not only great minds that think alike.
A latent conviction as to the immorality of all artists, which had been one of the maxims of her late mother, sprang into life. She blamed herself for having allowed a nurse of such undeniable physical attractions to become a member of the household. Mamie’s very quietness and apparent absence of bad qualities became additional evidence against her now, Mrs. Porter arguing that these things indicated deep deceitfulness. She told herself, what was not the case, that she had never trusted that girl.
But Lora Delane Porter was not a woman to waste time in retrospection. She had not been in her room five minutes before her mind was made up. It was improbable that Kirk and his guilty accomplice had sought so near and obvious a haven as the studio, but it was undoubtedly there that pursuit must begin. She knew nothing of his way of living at that retreat, but she imagined that he must have appointed some successor to George Pennicut as general factotum, and it might be that this person would have information to impart.
The task of inducing him to impart it did not daunt Mrs. Porter. She had a just confidence in her powers of cross-examination.
She went to the telephone and called up the garage where Ruth’s automobiles were housed. Her plan of action was now complete. If no information were forthcoming at
