"Where'd he go?" asked the general, feeling that that was safe enough ground.
"My husband thinks that he went out in one of the automobiles very early, for he found one of them gone."
"Did your husband see him go?" asked Bartlett.
"Oh, no, but he thinks he must have gone because there is only one automobile—"
"Oh, yes," said Henrietta, and stared at the others, fearful of reading her own crushing suspicion in their eyes.
Alphonse, the quiet, blasé, peerless Alphonse? Could it be he? That Alphonse had gone for an early morning spin lured by the dew on the clover fields, by the sweet chorus of awakening birds, borne by the unsuppressible desire to see the shy, sweet advent of a new day creeping up the flushed and rosy sky, was wholly out of the question. Alphonse's soul, in the early morning hours, was filled only with the beauty and glory of bed. The general had always been forced to arouse his serving-man and the process had often been painful, calling for sternness and suppressed wrath on the general's part. Alphonse a thief was more believable than Alphonse getting out of bed uncalled.
Billy was the first to speak.
"The car," she whispered.
"Oh, yes," said the landlady hastily, not quite sure what had happened or was to happen by the expression on the faces before her. "Oh, yes," reassuringly, "he took the car. My husband wasn't up when he went—"
The general rose, his face red with anger. "If he has taken my car," he thundered, "I shall have him prosecuted whether Henrietta likes it or not."