But I knew at once that he was genuinely alarmed at the news which I’d given him. It apparently staggered him for a moment. Then he said in his curt telephonic chest-tones, “I’ll be up at the house, at once.”
He came, before I’d even completed a second and more careful search. His face was cold and non-committal enough, but his color was gone and there was a look that was almost one of contrition in his troubled eyes, which seemed unwilling to meet mine. He questioned Lossie and cross-examined Hilton and Tokudo, and then called up the Chief of Police. Then he telephoned to the different railway stations, and carried Lossie off in the car to the McArthurs’, to interview Benny, and came back an hour later with that vague look of frustration still on his face.
He sat down to luncheon, but he ate very little. He was silent for quite a long time.
“Your boy’s all right,” he said in a much softer voice than I had expected from him. “He’s big enough to look after himself. And we’ll be on his trail before nightfall. He can’t go far.”
“No; he can’t go far,” I echoed, trying to fortify 339 myself with the knowledge that he must have taken little more than a dollar from the gilded cast-iron elephant which he used as a bank.
“I don’t want this to get in the papers,” explained my husband. “It’s—it’s all so ridiculous. I’ve put Kearney and two of his men on the job. He’s a private detective, and he’ll keep busy until he gets the boy back.”
Duncan got up from the table, rather heavily. He stood hesitating a moment and then stepped closer to my chair.
“I know it’s hard,” he said as he put a hand on my shoulder. “But it’ll be all right. We’ll get your boy back for you.”
I didn’t speak, because I knew that if I spoke I’d break down and make an idiot of myself. My husband waited, apparently expecting me to say something. Then he took his hand away.
“I’ll get busy with the car,” he said with a forced matter-of-factness, “and let you know when there’s any news. I’ve wired Buckhorn and sent word to Casa Grande—and we ought to get some news from there.”