"Tessie, you bad girl!" began Granny at the door. But she did not sound as if Tessie really had been a bad girl—she sounded loving and excited. When she ran into the room she stopped. "She isn't here!" she exclaimed, frightened because Tessie was not there. "She isn't here!"
"She must be!" declared Mr. Bill, and he ran through the other rooms. But Tessie was not in one of them. Mr. Bill's eager face fell. He had been so sure that Tessie would be there that he felt bewildered and indignant as well as frightened.
"Perhaps she hasn't had time to get here," suggested Joe forlornly, although he knew that Tessie had had plenty of time. All she had to do was to jump on a car, and she would be at the hotel in twenty minutes. They had taken more than twenty minutes to search the house and drive back. He called up the hotel office to learn if any one had seen Tessie. No one had. He turned to Mr. Bill with a questioning stare. Where was Tessie Gilfooly?
Mr. Bill shook his head. He wished he knew. And then he shook his broad shoulders and stared at Joe. "I'll find her!" he declared fiercely, with a confidence which was based on nothing sounder than desire.
"I'll find her!" contradicted Joe as fiercely.
"Deary me, where can she be?" wailed Granny. "It isn't like the Gilfoolys to go away like this! It never was like one of them but Pete! I wish Tessie had never heard of this queen business!"
"So do I!" fervently agreed Joe. He looked at Mr. Bill, as if in some way he blamed him!
Mr. Bill said never a word, but he did flush quickly. Deep, in his heart, he did not wish that Tessie had never heard of the queen business. Although Tessie had been kidnaped and might be in danger he did not wish that, for if Tessie had never been a queen, there was every chance that Mr. Bill would never have known her. When she was selling aluminum, she was just one of the hundreds of girls who poured into the Evergreen every morning and out of the Evergreen every evening. She was lost among the hundreds. But when Fate plucked her out of the industrial army, and showed her to Mr. Bill as a queen, he saw that she was fair and sweet and dear—how dear Mr. Bill had not quite realized until now. It made him furious to think of it now. You bet, he would find her!
"You go to bed, Granny, you and Johnny," suggested Joe. "We'll call you the minute we hear anything. You go to bed. You're dead tired!"
Granny was tired, but she could not go to sleep until she knew where Tessie was. She allowed Norah to lead her to her room and tuck her into the bed. She was too tired to resist. She was an old woman, she told Norah pitifully, and had lost her husband and seven children, but never in all of her life had she had had to go through anything like this. Why couldn't she have been kidnaped instead of Tessie?