CHAPTER XXXI
LIGHT ON A DARK SPOT
Janet returned from the matinée in a state of great excitement. “She’s here!” she cried, bursting in on Lefty. “You were right about it! I’ve seen her!”
The southpaw gazed in surprise at the flushed face of his charming wife. “You mean–”
“Virginia! I tell you I’ve seen her!”
“When? Where?”
“As we were leaving the theater. The lobby was crowded, and we were in the back of the jam. Suddenly I saw her over the heads of the people. She was just getting into an auto that was occupied by a handsome woman with snow-white hair. I wasn’t mistaken; it was Virginia. I couldn’t get to her. I tried to call to her, but she didn’t hear me. I’ll never say you were mistaken again, Lefty. Somehow you seem always to be right.”
Locke scarcely heard these final words. He was thinking rapidly. A sudden ray of hope had struck upon him. Confound it! Where was Stillman? He sprang to the telephone and called the Blade office again.
“Jack is the one best bet in this emergency,” he said, as he waited for the connections to be made.
He got the reporter on the wire, and Stillman stated that he had not been in the office ten minutes, and was about to call Lefty. Could he come up to the Great Eastern right away? Sure.
The feeling of depression and helplessness that had threatened to crush Locke began to fall away. The door he had sought, the one door by which there seemed any chance of passing on to success, appeared to be almost within reach of his hand. In her excitement at the theater, Janet had not possessed the presence of mind to call the attention of her friends to the snowy-haired woman, but he knew that she could describe her with some minuteness.