Then a sudden thought came to her. Suppose the woman was to make her escape, coming down in one of the elevators, while she and the clerk were going up in another. There had been ample time, she knew, for her to have murdered Ruth, were that her plan, and have already left the room.
"Wait just a moment," she cried to the clerk, who had said a few words to one of his assistants and was leaving the desk to join her. "I must speak to my cabman, but I'll be back in a moment." She dashed through the entrance doors and hurried to the point where Leary sat at his steering wheel.
"Wait here," she whispered to him, "until I come back, unless the woman we have been following comes out. If she does come out, and drive away, follow her, and find out where she goes. Then telephone me here. I will leave my name at the desk, and wait until I hear from you."
Leary nodded, and Grace quickly re-entered the lobby and joined the waiting clerk.
"Instruct your telephone operators," she said to him, "to let me know, in case anyone calls up Mrs. Duvall."
The clerk gave the necessary instructions, and the two then entered one of the elevators and quickly made their way to the seventh floor, upon which Mrs. Morton's apartment was located.
There was no one in the corridor when they left the elevator, and the clerk, who knew the location of the suite, hastened to it at once.
They reached the door. Grace was conscious of a feeling of apprehension, a sense of impending disaster. Her heart pounded violently as she waited for the answer to the clerk's knocks. She waited in vain. Only silence, grim, terrible, rewarded his efforts.
"Something has happened," Grace whispered, as the clerk again rapped upon the door, this time more loudly than before.
Again there was no reply, no evidence of the presence of anyone in the girl's rooms.