“Why, yes—I suppose so. But how you take things for granted! I must see Louis first of all. Oh, Buddy, Buddy dear!”
In the meantime, Phyllis’ mysterious disappearance was causing dismay and consternation in many hearts and minds.
Prescott, who had started out to find her, was looking everywhere, except in the home of Ivy Hayes.
Belknap, still at the Lindsay house, talked it over with Mrs Lindsay and Philip Barry and concluded that at last they were on the right track. He had no fears about finding the girl, for she could not disappear permanently. But it was a shock, and he was a little bewildered.
“Of course,” he said, “disappearance is practically confession. Miss Lindsay must be found—can, probably, easily be found. But I am sorry.”
“Sorry!” cried Millicent, “how you talk! You don’t mean you think Phyllis killed my brother, do you?”
“You said that yourself, at first, Mrs Lindsay,” Belknap reminded her.
“Only in the excitement of my first shock. Really, I was not quite responsible for what I said that night. Now, I know Phyllis couldn’t have done it——”
“Why not?”
“A girl like that! Incredible.”