“We don’t know; that is the sharp edge of it. He was in his room at noon, but when I went to take him his dinner he was gone.”
“One more question, and you need not answer it if I ought not to know: What was the trouble last night?”
“I am not sure, but I think that—that—” she stumbled over the wording of it and would have broken down, but Brant ventured a word of comfort and she went on: “They were playing cards, and the police took them all. Will has made mamma believe they were not gambling, but I am afraid that isn’t true.” She turned away from him to lean against a veranda pillar to cry softly with her face in her hands.
Brant saw the path of duty very clearly; and he saw, too, that it might easily lead him straight to his own undoing. None the less, he set his feet therein like a man and a lover.
“Don’t cry,” he said. “We must find some way to help him. Does Antrim know anything about this?”
“No; and that is why Isabel went to the theatre with him to-night. They had planned to go, and she knew he would find out if they stayed at home. She would have had to tell him.”
“That is all I need to know. Now go in and comfort your father and mother. I can help—perhaps more than you would be willing to believe. Good night.”
“One word, Mr. Brant: you will bring him home if you find him, won’t you?”
“Certainly. And I’ll find him, if he is in Denver. Has he a latchkey?”
“Yes.”