There was no use trying further. The clock hands touched twenty minutes past, she had thrown away over a quarter of an hour here while at the villa death was closing in surely upon its unsuspecting victim. She dropped the receiver with a groan, turning to the woman, who had just come out.
"Madame, c'est inutile. Je vous remercie."
The woman looked her over again with a softened glance, touched, perhaps, by the tremor that shook her visitor's voice.
"Mademoiselle est souffrante?"
"Non, madame, pas trop, ce n'est pas ça—mais il y a quelqu'un qui est en danger—quelqu'un qu'il faut prévenir. Si je peux trouver un taxi——"
"Gaston! Vite! Cherche un taxi pour mademoiselle. Va!"
With a warmed feeling that these were kindly people after all, Esther watched the young man's long figure slink out of the door like an otter around the bend of a stream.
"Asseyez-vous, mademoiselle," the woman bade her, and pushed forward a chair.
But she could not sit down. She was in a fever of excitement, quivering all over. With one section of her mind she thanked the woman again, with another she looked for the young man's return, with still another she said to herself, "How long will it take me to get to La Californie from here? Has Roger come back? Is the doctor getting the bandage ready for his hand? Oh, if it should already be too late!"
A torturing interval ensued. She left the loge and wandered out to the entrance. Rain had begun to fall, that would make it harder to find a taxi. It would happen, now of all times! Ten minutes passed, then up the street chug-chugged a somewhat battered motor-vehicle with the apache hanging on the step. Yes, it was a taxi, an antediluvian one, but she must not be critical. If a chariot offered one a lift out of hell, one would not stop to inquire its horse-power. The apache helped her in and closed the door. She turned grateful eyes on him through the open window and with an expressive gesture showed him she had no purse.