"Read on, Letitia," I cried, "that certainly does sound promising."
"'Half-witted girl discovered near the Harlem River, beneath the bridge, at One-Hundred-and-Fifty-fifth Street—singing snatches of song—muttering to herself.' The singing appears to point to Anna, don't you think, dear? Poor girl! Perhaps she was an idiot, after all, and we have been thinking such cruel things of her, just because she couldn't grapple with crème d'asperges and bifsteck aux pommes. Let us see: 'She fought desperately with the police officer—burst into fiendish laughter—threw back her veil, revealing dazzling beauty, dark hair, and face of almost appalling pallor—' That can't be Anna. I suppose that colored people feel pallor, but they certainly can't show it, can they? Here's something else: 'Scores Killed and Many Maimed in Wreck Horror.' Here's a long list of the unfortunates, but—the wreck occurred on the Illinois Central Cannon Ball Train, eighty-three miles from New Orleans."
"I am afraid, Letitia, that nothing has happened to her," I said hopelessly. "I mean by that, of course, that I am afraid we shan't discover anything in the newspapers."
"Isn't it exasperating?"
"Isn't what exasperating?" I asked. "You mean it is annoying that Anna wasn't decapitated by the trolley car, maimed in the wreck, or dead in the L station?"
"You are unkind, Archie," said Letitia, with tears in her eyes, "and I don't think this is a happy moment for joking. Of course you must be joking when you suggest that I am upset because—Anna hasn't had her head cut off. It isn't nice of you, dear. But I imagine that you are not quite yourself. This sort of thing does unhinge one. I wonder what we had better do? No, you can't and shan't go down-town, and leave me to receive Anna, perhaps dead on a shutter, or wet from the river, with weeds in her hair, like Ophelia; or—"
"They wouldn't bring her here, dear," I ventured, and this time I tried to be soothing, for I could see that Letitia was distraught. "They would take her to the morgue."
"Ugh!" she shuddered. "The morgue always sounds so creepy and damp. I can't associate it with Anna, who was so alive last night."
"And so disagreeable."