“But your mamma, Miss Starr! She will be very angry with me!”
“Mamma must not know. And anyway I must go. Come, if you won’t come with me I’m going alone.”
Starr with these words grasped a great cloak of dark green velvet, soft and pliable as a skin of fur, threw it over her white bridal robes, and hurried down the stairs.
“Oh, Miss Starr, darlin’,” moaned Morton looking hurriedly around for a cloak with which to follow. “You’ll spoil yer veil sure! Wait till I take it off’n ye.”
But Starr had opened the front door and was already getting into the great luxurious car that stood outside.
Chapter XXIII
Michael, as he went about on his search kept crying over and over again in his heart: “Oh, God! Do something to save her! Do something to save my little Starr!”
Over and over the prayer prayed itself without seeming thought or volition on his part, as he went from place to place, faithfully, keenly, step by step, searching out what he needed to know. At last toward six o’clock, his chain of evidence led him to the door of Stuyvesant Carter’s apartments.
After some delay the door was opened reluctantly a little way by a servant with an immobile mask of a face who stared at him stupidly, but finally admitted that the three men whose names he mentioned were inside. He also said that Mr. Carter was in, but could not be seen.
He closed the door on the visitor and went inside again to see if any of the others would come out. There ensued an altercation in loud and somewhat unsteady tones, and at last the door opened again and a fast looking young man who admitted himself to be Theodore Brooks slid out and closed it carefully behind him. The air that came with him was thick with tobacco smoke and heavy with liquor, and the one glimpse Michael got of the room showed a strange radiance of some peculiar light that glowed into the dusky hall weirdly.