“Well, let me keep on my clothes and sleep on the sofa, so I can wake up easy.”
“All right, dear, wherever you want to sleep, just so you sleep.”
So Ben was tucked in on the sofa, with the light carefully screened from his eyes, and again Ursula waited.
At eleven o’clock Bob Dulaney stopped his little car in front of the door and ran lightly up the steps.
“I saw your light and stopped in.”
“Please, what news?” she asked excitedly.
“Well, I’ve done some eliminating, but that’s all,” said Bob dejectedly. “But don’t you get down-hearted because we’ll keep going until the kid is found.”
“I’ll keep on hoping. Only tell me, please.”
“I raced along the road I thought the old car had taken and in spite of a puncture and getting out of gas and then out of water I finally came up with the worst looking old automobile I ever saw. It looked as though the Forty-Niners might have used it to travel over the old trail to California. It was pulled up in front of a half-way house, midway between Dorfield and Benton. I tell you I parked behind it in a jiffy and slipped into what used to be the bar, where I found some village bums and two or three transient guests eating ice cream cones and drinking ginger pop. One old cove was warming himself at the stove and loudly deploring the dry state of the country. He had on a great fur coat and looked as though he might have been traveling some distance.
“I cottoned to the old chap and began warming myself, too.”