Laurie recognized the secretary.
"Which way did they go?"
"East."
They were standing on the top landing by this time, and Laurie strode forward.
"I'll take a look around her rooms. Perhaps she left some message."
Sam accompanied him, and though he had not desired this continued companionship, Laurie found a certain solace in it. In his humble way this black boy was Doris's friend. He was doing his small part now to help her, if, as he evidently suspected, there was something sinister in her departure.
Entering the familiar studio, Laurie looked around it with a pang. Unlike the quarters of Shaw, it remained unchanged. The room, facing north as it did, looked a little cold in the early light, but it was still stamped with the impress of its former occupant. The flowers he had given her only yesterday hung their heads in modest welcome, and half a dozen eye-flashes revealed half a dozen homely little details that were full of reassurance. Here, open and face down on the reading-table, was a book she might have dropped that minute. There was the long mirror before which she brushed her wonderful hair and, yes, the silver-backed brushes with which she brushed it. On the writing-table were a pencil and a torn sheet of paper, as if she had just dashed off a hurried note.
In short, everything in the room suggested that the owner, whose presence still hung about it, might return at any instant. And yet, there in the window, where he had half jokingly told her to place it, hung the brilliant symbol of danger which he himself had selected.
He walked over and took it from the latch. In doing this, he discovered that only half the scarf hung there, and that one end was jagged, as if roughly and hastily cut off. He put the scarf into his pocket. As he did so, his pulses leaped. Pinned to its folds was a bit of paper, so small and soft that even the inquisitive eye of Sam, following his every motion, failed to detect it. Laurie turned to the black boy.
"We'd better get out of here," he suggested, trying to speak carelessly and leading the way as he spoke. "Miss Mayo may be back at any moment."