"I don't think I'd put it in just yet," he said quietly.
For a moment she paused irresolute; then she dropped the coin in the slot.
"Is this the Hotel Kington?" she asked. "Will you please try again to get Mr. Phipps—Harold Phipps? P-h-i-p-p-s."
Quin watched her fingers drumming on the shelf, and he knew he ought to go out of the booth and close the door; but instead he stayed in and closed it.
"He doesn't answer?" Eleanor was repeating over the telephone. "Will you please page the dining-room, and if he is not at breakfast send a bell-boy up to waken him? It's very important."
Again there was a long wait, during which Eleanor did not so much as turn her head in Quin's direction. It was only when her answer came that she looked at him blankly.
"They say he isn't there. The chambermaid was cleaning the room, and said his bed had not been disturbed."
Then, seeing a humorously unsympathetic look flit across Quin's face, she burst out angrily:
"What right had you to follow me over here?"
They were standing very close in the narrow glass enclosure, and as he looked down at the small, trembling figure with her back against the wall and her eyes full of frightened defiance, he felt uncomfortably like a hunter who has run down some young wild thing and holds it at bay.