"Miss Maynard," said Harnash formally, and in spite of himself he could not prevent his lip from trembling, "I don't know where he is."
"What!" exclaimed the girl, really astonished, as the whole assembly broke into exclamations. Had Harnash accomplished the impossible, as he had threatened?
"I can't find him," went on Harnash. He could scarcely sustain Stephanie's direct and piercing gaze. He forced himself to look at her, however. "I don't know where he is," he repeated.
"But have you searched?"
"Everywhere. I called up his apartment on Park Avenue at ten o'clock. They said he wasn't there and hadn't been there all night. I started my man out at once in a taxicab, jumped into my own car, and I've been everywhere--the office, his clubs--I've even had my secretary and clerks telephone all the hotels on the long chance that he might be at one of them."
"And you haven't found a trace of him? George Harnash--" began Stephanie, but Harnash was too quick for her; he did not allow her to finish.
"You will forgive me," he went on; "I did even more than that in my alarm. I finally notified the police on the chance that he might have been er--er--brought in."
He shot a warning look at Stephanie that checked further inquiries from her.
"Why should he be brought in?" asked Josephine Treadway, who had no reason for not asking the question.
"Why, you see," went on Harnash, "it's desperately hard to tell, and I'd rather die than mention it, but under the circumstances I suppose--"