Then an impulse seized me.
All day long I had wrestled alone with this trouble of mine. I hadn't consulted Mr. Brace. I had kept it from the Honorable Jim. I had put up all sorts of pretences about it to the people at the hotel. But I felt now that it would have to come out. I couldn't stand it any longer.
I turned to Miss Million's cousin.
"Mr. Jessop, I must tell you," I said in a serious and measured voice. "The truth is I don't know!"
"What?" he took up, startled. "Are you telling me that you don't know where my cousin is at this moment?"
I nodded.
"I wish I did know," I said fervently. And as we stood, a little aside from the glass doors in the vestibule, I went on, in soft, rapid tones, to tell him the story of Miss Million's disappearance from my horizon since half-past eleven last night.
I looked up, despairingly, into his startled, concerned face.
"What has happened to her?" I said urgently. "What do you think? Where do you think she is?"
Before he could say a word a messenger came up to me with a telegram.