The bed had not been slept in. The trunks were there, but the girl's dress-suit case, coat, hat, furs and best street frock were missing.
Pinned to the pincushion Belinda found a note, written in Adelina's spidery hand. It ran:
"I am going away to carve out a career for myself. It will be useless to try to find me. I have some money, and, if necessary, I will pawn my jewels; but I will soon be making plenty of money, and as soon as I am famous I will come back to see you all.
"Tell my father not to worry. I will be all right and he won't miss me, and I can't let him keep me from my Art any longer. If he is willing to let me study for the stage he can advertise in the papers."
Even in the midst of her annoyance and her apprehension the Youngest Teacher could not smother a chuckle over the melodramatic tone of the letter, the reference to the jewels—consisting of three rings, a breastpin and a watch—the serene egotism and confidence in imminent fame and fortune.
But there was a serious side to the complication. There was no telling into what hands the stage-struck girl had fallen, nor where she might have been persuaded to take refuge. It would probably be an easy matter to find her with the aid of detectives, even if she had confided her plans to no one in the school; but meanwhile she might have an unpleasant experience.
So Belinda's face was grave as she ran down to Miss Ryder's study with the letter, and it was still grave as she went out, a little later, to send a telegram to Mr. Wilson, and visit the office of a well-known detective agency. In the interval everyone in the house had been questioned and professed complete ignorance.
The detective was smilingly optimistic—even scornful. The thing was too easy. But when Mr. Wilson, torn 'twixt distress and vexation, arrived that evening the self-confident sleuth had made no progress. Adelina had apparently vanished off the face of the earth. The very simplicity of her disappearance was baffling.
That she would, sooner or later, apply to some theatrical manager or agency, or interview some teacher of dramatic art, was a foregone conclusion, and on the second day after her departure it was found that she had tried to obtain interviews with several managers, and had had a talk with one, who good-naturedly told what had taken place at the interview.
"Handsome young idiot," he said to the detective. "That's why they let her in; but she hasn't a gleam of intelligence concealed about her, and it would take her a lifetime to get rid of her crazy ideas and mannerisms, even if there were any hope of her amounting to anything after she did get rid of them. Her idea of stage life is a regular pipe dream, and she'd never be willing to begin at the bottom. She wouldn't stand the hard work twenty-four hours. She had sort of an idea that she was a howling beauty with a genius that didn't need any training, and that if she could only get to see me I'd throw a fit over her and start her out on the road at five hundred dollars a week to star in 'Camille,' or something of that kind. She made me tired. I've seen thousands of the same kind, but I talked to her like a Dutch uncle; told her she wasn't so much as a beauty, and that she had a voice like a hurdy-gurdy, and that all her ideas about acting were crazy. Kind of rough, of course, but wholesome, that sort of straight talk is. I told her genius in the stage line was twins with slaving night and day; that they looked so much alike you couldn't tell them apart, and that the kind of genius she was ranting about was all hot air. I said if she could take some lessons and learn to sing and dance a little she might go on in the chorus, but that I'd advise charwork ahead of that, and that I didn't see the faintest illusive twinkle of a star about her. She cried and looked sick, but she seemed to be discouraged and open to conviction. So then I told her the best thing she could do was to go home to her folks and marry some decent fellow and look at the stage across the footlights—not too much of that, either. Yet the Gerry Society doesn't think much of us managers, and nobody'd suspect me of heading rescue brigades. I've got a daughter of my own, and she isn't on the stage—not by a blamed sight."