[CHAPTER V]
"What can have happened, Archie?" cried Letitia excitedly next morning, as she entered the cubby-hole that I called my dressing-room and interrupted my shaving. Her face was pale and her eyes shone. "There is no breakfast laid, and—there is no Anna. I went to her room and found that she had not slept there. Evidently she did not return last night. Something dreadful must have occurred."
I put my razors carefully away, with the deliberation that great men note at moments of calamity and distress. Then I followed Letitia to the dining-room, where there was disorderly testimony to the accuracy of her information. Nothing even suggested breakfast. In fact, the remains of last night's parody on dinner confronted us and evidently declined to seek oblivion. Letitia looked aghast at the débris, but as I had just left myself enough time to dally with the matutinal bacon and tea, I could not repress my extreme annoyance. I could not—and I did not.
"But, Archie," said Letitia, noting my vexation, "while it is most irritating to find no breakfast, one must not forget that there is a graver problem. Where is Anna? She is a human being, Archie. We must accord her some slight consideration, even though she treated us so badly last night. She must"—Letitia's voice sank to a whisper—"she must have met with foul play."
"I doubt it, Letitia"—I felt awfully surly—"she is not the sort."
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Letitia angrily. "She was an attractive girl—of her kind. You may not admire her, but colored people would. It isn't only homely girls who meet foul play. The newspapers always insist that every woman who is murdered, or waylaid, is lovely, but that is only to make the story readable. I've often thought, Archie, that the only chance many girls have to be called beautiful is to be murdered. Have you ever heard of a typewriter girl who has come to grief, and who wasn't beautiful? I haven't. Some of them are regular old crows, but as soon as they reach the newspapers they are transfigured. Crime seems to be a great beautifier. Anna may have been made away with. If so, we shall read that she was a dazzlingly charming mulatto."
"In the meantime, dear," I said patiently, "what shall we do for breakfast? Everything seems tragic, you know, on an empty stomach."