A word not generally used by ladies escaped Suzanne. There was nothing for it but to send him away. She ran into the hall and pressed the bell, listening in a fever for Aggie McGee's step on the kitchen stairs. Simultaneously with its first heavy thud came the peal of the front door bell. Suzanne, who had noticed that the taxi was moving fast and would make the steps before Larkin, called down on Aggie McGee's ascending head:
"That's Miss Maitland. A gentleman I expected is just behind her. I can't see him now, I haven't time. Tell him I've been here and gone."
She went back into the reception room and stood listening. She heard the door opening, Esther's step in the hall; it was all right, the detective would get his congé without being seen by any one but Aggie McGee. She drew a breath of relief and turned smiling to the girl in the doorway. Miss Maitland did not give back the smile; she sent a searching look over the room and said in a low, breathless voice as if she had been running:
"Is Bébita here?"
There was a moment of silence. Through it the heavy tread of Aggie McGee passing along the hall sounded unnaturally loud. As it went clump, clump, down the kitchen stairs Suzanne was aware of Miss Maitland's face, startlingly strange, ashen-colored. At first it was all she took in.
"Bébita—here?" she stammered. "How could she be? She's with you."
Miss Maitland made a step into the room, her hands went up clenched to her chest, her voice came again through the broken gasps of a runner:
"No—she isn't. I thought I'd find her with you—I thought she'd come back. Oh, Mrs. Price—" she stopped, her eyes, telling a message of disaster, fixed on the other.
Suzanne's answer came from opened lips, dropped apart in a sudden horror:
"What do you mean? Why should she be here?"