I don't know what time it was, but the sun had swung round to the window, when I heard steps in the passage and a woman's voice, high and quavering. I leaped up and entered the chief's office by one door as Mrs. Whitehall, George and O'Mally came in by the other.
She looked pale and shriveled. I didn't then know what they'd said to her, whether they'd already tried their damnable third degree. But they hadn't, all they had done was to tell her her daughter had been wanted at the Whitney office and couldn't be found. That scared her, she'd come with them at once, only insisting that they stop at the flat and let her see that Carol was not there. This they did, admitting afterward that her surprise and alarm struck them as absolutely genuine.
These emotions were plain on her face; any fool could see she was racked with fear and anxiety. It was stamped on her features, it was in her wildly questioning eyes.
"Mr. Whitney," she said, without preamble or greeting, "what does this mean? Where is my daughter?"
The old man was as courteous as ever, but under the studied urbanity of his manner, I could feel the knife-edged sharpness that only cut through when his blood was up.
"That is what we want to know from you, Mrs. Whitehall. We needed some information from your daughter this morning and we find that she has—I think I may say, fled. Where to, surely you, her mother, must know."
"No," she cried, her hollow eyes riveted on his. "No. She was coming to me this afternoon, everything was arranged, ready and waiting. And now she's gone, and you, you men here, want to find her. What is it? There's something strange, something I don't know." Her glance moved over the watching faces. They were ominously unresponsive. Where she looked for hope or help she saw nothing but a veiled menace, every moment growing clearer.
"What is it?" she cried, her voice rising to a higher note, shrill and shaking. "What is the matter? Tell me. You know—you know something you're hiding from me?"
"We think that of you, Mrs. Whitehall," said the chief, ponderous and lowering, "and we want to hear it. The time has come for frankness. Hold nothing back for, as you say, we know."
The woman gave a gasp and took a step nearer to him: