"That you, Catherine?"
"Have you found him?" she cried.
"No." The wire hummed, dragging his voice off to remoteness. "Has Miss Kelly come back?"
"Where have you looked? I'll go hunt——"
"You stay there." Then, suddenly loud, "You might call up the hospitals. I've notified the police station. They are flashing the description all over town."
"Where are you now?" begged Catherine, but there was only silence, and the terminating click.
Flora was at her elbow.
"Ain't found him?" She clucked her tongue.
"You better go on home, Flora." Catherine couldn't look at her. She felt a ghoulish contamination, setting her mind afire with horrible pictures. Spencer, run down in the snowy street. Spencer—"I must stay here anyway."
Flora wavered. She wanted, Catherine knew, to see the end of this melodrama.