He had no difficulty in getting Miss Choate on the telephone, but the teacher only remembered that Mary Rose had left the building when the other children did. She had seen her go out of the school yard with a group of boys and girls. Who were they? She was sorry but she did not remember. They had not impressed her. She had noticed no one but Mary Rose, who had such a strong personality one had to notice her. She did hope that nothing had happened to her and she, too, remembered the little girl who had been kidnapped over on Sixth Avenue.
"Of course, nothing has happened to her," Bob Strahan said hurriedly. "She'll turn up all right."
He told Mrs. Donovan the same thing when he went back and reported the result of his interview.
"What shall I do?" Mrs. Donovan was twisting the corners of her apron into hard knots and her mouth twitched with nervousness. "She's never been out so late as this since she came to Waloo. An' she's all alone! I'll never forgive myself if anythin's happened to her."
"We'll go over to the police station," suggested Mr. Jerry. "What did she wear, Mrs. Donovan? The police will want a description of her clothes."
Mrs. Donovan sobbed as she described the blue and red and green gingham frock with the white collar and black patent leather belt that had been Mary Rose's pride.
"We'll call up the hospitals, too," Mr. Jerry said to Bob Strahan as they drove to the police station in his car. "It's just possible that she has been hurt, an automobile or something, and taken to a hospital If she was knocked unconscious she couldn't very well tell who she was."
"Gee!" exclaimed big-eyed white-faced Jimmie Bronson, who had jumped into the tonneau and was standing with his hands on the back of the front seat, "I hope Mary Rose wasn't knocked insensible!"
The police had heard nothing of any little girl who answered to the description of Mary Rose but a careful note was made of what Mr. Jerry and Bob Strahan had to say of her disappearance. There had been no report of any accident in the district and no child had been kidnapped so far as the police knew. Mr. Jerry and Bob Strahan were disappointed. They felt baffled. It didn't seem possible that a little girl could have disappeared so completely as Mary Rose had disappeared. When they drove back to the Washington, Jimmie was not with them. He was going to make a few inquiries on his own hook, he told the two men.
"No news is good news, Mrs. Donovan," Mr. Jerry insisted. "Mary Rose is all right. No one could harm her."