"If I only knew how to make tea!" sighed Letitia reflectively. "I've often seen Aunt Julia make it, but I quite forget if you heat the tea-leaves and pour water over them, or if you boil them in a saucepan. Oh, how foolish I was to neglect these trifles! But I never thought I should ever have to make tea."
We were in the kitchen, where the remains of last night's mock-dinner were even more glaringly apparent. It was sickening, in the dewy morn, to see the soiled dishes and the encumbered plates. There was the piece of lobster that Arthur Tamworth left. There was my soup, in a cold, coagulated mass, on the table. There was the bifsteck aux pommes, stark before us. Letitia, in a pink peignoir covered with lace, tried to flit around, but there was no room to flit in. I experienced a horrid sense of nausea, and felt willing to abandon breakfast. Fortunately, we were both young, and had not reached that downward grade leading to a placid enjoyment of breakfast. It is only the more than middle-aged who find keen physical satisfaction in the early kipper. To the young in spirit, the morning meal is but a tradition, followed with a certain amount of sycophancy.
We found some milk and eggs in unexpected places and, as I was in a hurry, we made a hasty breakfast. Letitia boiled the tea in a saucepan, and in an ecstasy of originality, suggested that we cook the eggs in that receptacle at the same time. It was not what one might call an artistic meal. The tea tasted like ink, and the sweet disposition of the egg was cooked out of all semblance of its own wistful, appealing nature.
"You mustn't leave me in this unsettled state, Archie," said Letitia nervously. "I couldn't stand it, dear. I—I feel quite upset. We must look through the papers and see if anything has happened to Anna. And perhaps it would be a good thing to notify the authorities. Who are the authorities, in a case like this, Archie? Not the mayor, I suppose, or the aldermen; not—er—the coroner?"
"Police headquarters, I should say"—a little doubtfully.
"Of course, she may come in at any moment," Letitia suggested, glancing rather timidly over her left shoulder. "I quite dread it. Perhaps she will return with a battered face, or bleeding profusely from a wound. It would be annoying to notify—er—the—Policeman's Home, did you say?—until we are reasonably sure. There must be some penalty for uttering false alarms. Sit down, Archie, and I'll just run through the papers."
I began to realize that Letitia was veritably wrought up, and that it was no use contemplating my routine at the office until some light had been shed upon the seemingly untimely fate of Miss Carter. So I obeyed Letitia and sat down, while she, somewhat feverishly, took up the morning papers and plunged into their labyrinthine recesses.
"'Girl decapitated by Trolley Car,'" she read slowly. "Let us see now: 'The sight seemed to infuriate the mob—car struck her in the left leg—beautiful blonde.' That settles it, doesn't it? It couldn't be Anna. The papers will certainly call her singularly beautiful, but no reporter, whatever his political or religious conviction, could describe her as a blonde. Ah, here we are. This certainly seems to fit: 'Woman Drops Dead in L Station—Sitting bolt upright in an elevated railroad station in Brooklyn, a woman whose identity had not been discovered by the police last night'—Archie, put on your things, and go to Brooklyn."
"Is there nothing more, Letitia?" I asked, for I loathe Brooklyn.
She continued, moistening her lips: "'The surgeons unable to revive her—Coma followed by death—Very handsome, elegantly dressed woman, golden hair—' Well, evidently," said Letitia, and it really seemed to me as though she were disappointed, "it can't be Anna. You had better not go to Brooklyn, after all, Archie. Here's something else. Really the newspapers are full of clues. 'Idiot Girl Found Wandering By River—'"