“Yes; she’s not been there since yesterday. I’ve been everywhere I could think of where it was likely she would be. I couldn’t find a trace of her.”
“Then’s she’s gone to Europe, or is going to-morrow, as she told Pierpont. She took her money. We looked after you’d gone, and it wasn’t there.”
“It’ll be too late to find out to-night if she’s gone. The ticket offices are closed. I can’t think she’s done that—without a word to any one. It’s not like her.”
The señora here asked what they said. Barron, who spoke Spanish indifferently, signaled to the young woman to answer for him. She did so, the señora listening intently. At the end of her daughter-in-law’s speech she shook her head.
“No, she has not gone,” she said slowly in Spanish. “She could not take that journey. She was not able—she was sick.”
“Sick, and out on such a night with all that money!” moaned her daughter-in-law.
Barron got up with a smothered ejaculation. He knew more than either of the women. The attempt at robbery the night before had failed. To-night the girl herself had disappeared. What might it all mean? He was afraid to think.
“I’m going out again,” he said. “I’ll be in probably in four or five hours to see if, by any chance, she’s come back. You have everything ready—fires and warm clothes and things to eat in case I bring her with me. The rain’s worse than ever. Ching says she had no umbrella.”
Without more conversation he left, the two women bestirring themselves to make ready the supper he had ordered. At three o’clock he returned again to find the señora sitting alone, by the ruddy stove, Mrs. Garcia, the younger, being asleep on a sofa in the boys’ room. The old lady persuaded him to drink a cup of coffee she had kept warm, and, as she gave it him, looked with silent compassion into his haggard face.
When day broke he had not again appeared. By this time the household was in a ferment of open alarm. The boys were retained from school, as it was felt they might be needed for messages. Pierpont undertook to visit all Mariposa’s pupils, in the dim hope of finding through them some clue to her movements, though it was well known she was on intimate terms with none of them. Soon after breakfast Mrs. Willers appeared, uneasy, and by the time the now weeping Mrs. Garcia had told her all, pale and deeply disturbed.