In a trembling voice, she questioned the desk clerk, “Have you had any word from Mr. de Rochelle?”
The clerk was perusing the morning paper as she put the question to him. He started violently, gazed intently into her face, then back at the paper. Finally he said “de Rochelle? Is this the de Rochelle you mean?” And with a pencil he marked a column in the paper and handed it to her.
Her worst fears were more than realized as she read the tragic headlines:
BRIDGE JUMPER SUCCEEDS
FRANÇOIS DE ROCHELLE
of
SAHARA DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATION
DROWNED LAST NIGHT IN EAST RIVER
NEAR QUEENSBOROUGH BRIDGE
ADDRESS UNKNOWN
Boys playing on the water front last night discovered a man’s body floating toward the shore and with the help of a policeman it was soon recovered. The face was greatly disfigured, due to his striking the bridge pilaster. The body was removed to the morgue....
Sana grew pale. Great tears forced themselves from the deep seas of her eyes and the paper, falling from her limp grasp fluttered to the floor. The clerk, noticing this, hastily walked from behind his desk and reached Sana just in time to catch her as she fell in a dead faint.
A small crowd of early hotel guests soon gathered about Sana. Among them was the hotel doctor, who ordered that the girl be at once taken to her room. A nurse was summoned and with her aid the physician soon revived Sana. Quiet and rest, he said, were all that would be required to restore the weakened girl to a normal condition.
That morning, Mrs. O’Brien, breakfasting with her husband, read of the drowned man in the paper. Believing that Dr. White had been implicated in some foul play, she at once sought him out. Yes, he had read of it, but was as much puzzled as she.