"I'm safe, but not all right!" she reproached me. "My messenger who went to the train didn't find you from my description, I know, because he came back with my note——"
"Too flattering, was your description, or the other way?" I asked, trying to buoy her up with frivolity.
"You wouldn't joke if you'd read the note. Oh, Ernest, Monny and Rachel have disappeared!"
"Good gracious! But Anthony——"
"He went to look for them, of course; and he's disappeared, too."
"By Jove!" The exclamation sounded inadequate, but I was so taken aback that I had nothing else to say. It seemed impossible that Anthony, instead of averting danger, could be involved in it himself. It was unlike his resourcefulness. I could not believe it of him, and so, when I had time to control mind and tongue, I said as much to Biddy.
"Yes, I felt like that, too, at first," she admitted. "He gives one the impression of being so infallible in any emergency, somehow, as if he'd be above it, and look down on it from his height. But it's more than twelve hours since he went, and he promised to send me word how things were going on if he couldn't get to me himself. No word has come."
"What have you done?" I asked. "Have you communicated with the police?"
"Sir Marcus Lark has. He was at the ball, and has been very good. But it's for Mrs. East's sake, mostly. One feels he's glad it happened, to give him the chance to win her gratitude—or something. He's been back and forth all day; and I'm expecting him any minute. Mrs. East has been fainting and hysterical, and everything early Edwardian, so I sent for a doctor. But she's better on the strength of sal volatile and eggnog, and she's promised to see Sir Marcus."
"Now tell me what happened, from the beginning," I said, when I had made Biddy sit down by me on the sofa, and was trying to warm a cold little hand in mine.