“When did you see her last?”
“Why—yesterday afternoon.”
“She didn’t say where she was going?”
“No. I didn’t see her when she went out. What——”
“You didn’t even see her?” Jerry collapsed on the hall table, leaning against it with every sagging muscle, her freckles starting out hurriedly on her white face. “Listen—When I got in this A.M. I looked in her room to see if she was in yet. She wasn’t. It was pretty late, but I didn’t think anything about it and went to bed and slept like a fool. Went there when I woke up at nine-thirty and—she wasn’t there. Bed, room, everything just the same way it was last night. Her American Beauty evening dress the only one of her clothes gone—I looked last night to see what she’d worn, and that was missing—and now—it still is. Where is she?”
“You are sure she hadn’t come in—and gone out again——”
“In her American Beauty evening dress? That would mean she came in at three A.M. the soonest she could have come and I not heard her—and gotten up at nine at the latest she could have and I not heard her—and gone out in evening dress and not come back yet! It’s nearly nine now.”
Joy considered, putting down her music roll. “You don’t know who she went out with last night?”
Jerry shook her head. “If I’d only been home when she started——”
The shriek of the telephone scared them both out of their positions. “You answer,” said Joy, and together they shivered to the closet down the hall in whose privacy they had their telephone conversations. Jerry lifted up the receiver. “Hello, oh, hello, Davy. She isn’t here just now. Oh, that’s all right, we were going to that dance to-night. Do you know by any chance who Sal went out with last night? You do?” She wound the telephone cord around one finger and then watched it tighten as she pulled until the finger grew livid. “Oh, will they be around at the dance to-night? Oh, well—you needn’t bother. Oh, all right, only I haven’t put on my gingham yet, so don’t make the poor kid race all the way. See you later.”