VII
Lester Tracy was just leaving the house when he was called back to the telephone. He went petulantly. He wouldn’t have gone at all if it had not been an anonymous call, and therefore faintly interesting. The past six months had not improved him; he was jaded, irritable, restless.
Maisie’s quiet little voice had a singular effect upon him.
“Lester!” she said. “Will you please come? There’s a man here, and he won’t go away.”
It was the first time he had ever been directly appealed to, had ever been asked to play a man’s part. It steadied and fortified him miraculously.
“Of course I’ll come,” he answered. “What’s the trouble?”
“I don’t know. He said he wanted to see the baby, and when he got into the room he locked the door. He won’t open it. Maybe he’s been drinking. So I came here, to the telephone in the little dressing room—where I bathe the baby, you know,” she explained in her careful, patient way. “It hasn’t any door into the hall. I can’t get out. And—oh, I’m so afraid he might try to hurt the baby!”
Lester didn’t think that. He wrote down the address and ran headlong down the stairs and into the waiting car.