"Gertrude is always prompt," said Mrs. Bateman, as they waited in the ante-room. "I cannot imagine what is keeping her. Telephone over to her house, Anna, and see if she has left, won't you? I have to attend to things here."
Mrs. Stillman hurried to the telephone, coming back later with a puzzled expression on her aristocratic features.
"Her cousin says she left there at half past seven in an automobile," she said. "It is half past eight now."
"An automobile?" said Mrs. Bateman. "Did anybody send for her, I wonder?"
No one seemed to know. Their candidate had always been transported in her own carriage and no one had thought of sending for her. Still, some friend might have done so—and in an automobile, Bailey Armstrong, for instance—who had a new one. Nothing was more natural than—
But just then Bailey came into the ante-room.
"It's the strangest thing," he began, "Miss Van Deusen does not come, and nobody seems to know where she is. And Jack Allingham is missing, too. None of his friends can account for his absence. What are we going to do?"
"Do?" repeated Mrs. Bateman. "What can we do?"
"The audience—a crowded one—is getting impatient," Bailey went on. "We've got to begin somehow. The other side have a speaker whom they can put on, but we—"
"Go on yourself, Bailey," said Mrs. Mason. "You'll have to. We can fill up the time somehow until Gertrude comes."