He gave the problem up with a baffled shrug and hoped that Lucile’s information would supply at least a key to the puzzle.
He was approaching the bridge leading to the Stallings estate. His headlights showed the girl wasn’t there as he cut the motor and slid up to the bridge approach. He glanced at his watch and saw that it lacked five minutes of the appointed time. He lit a cigarette and settled back to wait.
Lucile was not there when he lit his second cigarette. Complete silence enveloped the remote section of the peninsula. Darkness covered the car as he waited for the maid to keep her appointment, for the moon was lost to sight. The heavy cloud on the western horizon obscured it.
Was he going to be stood up by the girl? It was beginning to look like it. His watch indicated fifteen minutes after two when he threw away his second cigarette and yawned. He had been stood up before but never by a girl who seemed as eager for a date as Lucile.
He got out of the sedan and stretched, then walked slowly up on the arched bridge, stopped at the top of the span where he could see the upper story of the Stallings mansion.
Everything was in utter darkness. Beyond was the placid glistening expanse of Biscayne Bay, and far beyond that a few vagrant lights on the mainland.
An odd sense of unease possessed him. He wasn’t kidding himself when he knew Lucile wanted to come to him when she made the appointment.
It was two twenty-three. He watched and listened intently, holding his racing thoughts in abeyance. The only sound was the plashing of ripples against the bridge piers beneath him.
The wry grin went away from his mouth, and his features hardened into a mask of anger. All at once he realized how much he had been counting on the information he hoped to get from the girl. Perhaps she had been caught when she slipped back into the house after leaving him earlier in the evening. Stallings must have seen his car parked there, might have recognized it. The housekeeper would have told him who the visitor was.
If the girl had been forcibly prevented from meeting him it would be an indication that someone was afraid of what she might divulge.