She felt a shriek rising to her lips and pressed her hand against them. Secrecy, silence, her stunned brain had grasped that and directed her restraining hand. Then the one deep feeling of her shallow nature called her shattered faculties into order. Love lent her power, steadied her, gave her the will to act.
She sat down on the sofa and read the letter again, slowly, getting its full significance. For the first time in her life responsibility was cast upon her; she could throw the burden on no one else. By her own efforts, by her own courage and initiative, she must get Bébita back. She whispered it over, "I must do it. I must do it myself," then fell silent, her face stony in its tension of thought. Suddenly its rigidity broke; in an illuminating flash she saw the first step clear, and rising ran to the telephone. The person she called up was Larkin. He answered himself and she told him she wanted to see him on a matter of great importance and would come at once to his office.
Fifteen minutes later, her face hidden by a chiffon veil, her rumpled smartness covered with a silk motor coat, she was knocking at his door.
Mr. Larkin's office was cool and shady, the blinds half lowered to keep out the glare of the afternoon sun. In the midst of its airy neatness, surrounded by an imposing array of desks, card cabinets, typewriters and files, Mr. Larkin was waiting alone for his important client.
She dropped into the chair he set for her, and, pushing up her veil, revealed a countenance so bereft of the petulant prettiness he knew, that he started and stood gazing in open concern. The sight of his astonishment caused the tears to well into Suzanne's eyes, drowned and sunken by past floods, and her story to break without prelude from her lips.
Larkin's surprise at her appearance gave place to a tight-gripped interest when he grasped the main fact of her narrative. He let her run through it without interruption nodding now and then, a frowning sidelong glance on her face.
When she had finished he drew a deep breath and said:
"The moment I saw you, I knew something was wrong. But this—" he raised his hands and let them drop on the desk—"Good Lord! I hadn't an idea it was anything so serious."
But she hadn't finished—the worst, the thing that had brought her—she had yet to tell. And she began about the letter received an hour ago. At that Larkin forgot his sympathies, was the detective again, hardly concealing his impatience as he watched her fumbling at the cords of her purse. Finally extracted and given to him he read it, once and then again, Suzanne eyeing him like a hungry dog.
"Last evening," he muttered after a scrutiny of the postmark, "Grand Central Station." Then he rose, went to the window and, jerking up the blind, held the paper against the light, sniffed at it, and felt its texture between his thumb and finger. Suzanne saw him shake his head, her avid glance following him as he came back to the desk and studied the sheet through a magnifying glass.