The lawyer seated himself at Marshall Bryant’s right. He was a perfectly correct and formal figure as he accepted a cup of tea from Lucy. She made a little fuss over the young lawyer, and her grandmother teased her about it.
“Well, just think of what Mr. Dorn has done for me!” Lucy answered, laughing. “He’s the one who found me, and I shall always be grateful to him.” She shook her head, remembering. “Last Sunday, this stranger came to me asking to see my family letters and my silver ring. Asking me to identify myself. At first I didn’t know whether to take Mr. Dorn seriously.”
Vicki longed to know if they had met at Pine Top, but she could not afford to ask questions.
Thurman Dorn smiled a little. “I can tell you now, Miss Lucy, that a month earlier I was exasperated at not finding you. And your grandparents”—he turned toward them deferentially—“were exasperated with me. It’s a good thing for all of us that you came back to San Francisco from your vacation. If you hadn’t met me in the lobby of the St. Clair Hotel last Sunday, I believe I would have sent out some sort of alarm for you.”
So they had met last Sunday in San Francisco, Vicki noted. That meant Lucy had come in from Pine Top. Reasonable enough. But why did Lucy give Dorn and the Bryants the impression that her tour with Mrs. Heath was a “vacation”? Vicki wanted to see whether Lucy would mention, in the course of conversation, Mrs. Heath or the Reverend Mr. Hall or Knowlton Graves.
Curiously, she did not mention them and Mr. Dorn did not, either. He did talk in detail about his methods of search and the fine co-operation he had received from the San Francisco Post Office and Police Department. Mr. Dorn named persons and places involved in his search—Whitney Decorators, Lucy’s old Telegraph Hill residential address (where he couldn’t find her), a Dr. Alice James who was Lucy’s and Lucy’s mother’s physician. Vicki had not unearthed any of these in the course of her own search in and around San Francisco. Not one of them! This was nightmarish!
“Then who is the girl I traced to Pine Top?” Vicki thought again, in utter bewilderment. “Is this girl the same girl I saw? No, she isn’t. This girl’s hair is very dark brown, sable brown, and that girl’s was almost dark blond.”
Yet, Vicki thought, in tracing Lucy Rowe herself, she had received straightforward answers from Jill Joseph, Mrs. Stacey at the Hotel Alcott, Mr. Hall, Gravy. They obviously were not lying because all their accounts of Lucy Rowe tallied and dovetailed. Vicki could only think:
“Either Mr. Dorn has been misled by this girl who is lying, or—less likely—the lawyer’s lying. Or—more likely—I’ve made some glaring error.”
In fairness to all concerned, she could do only one thing: check back on the facts in San Francisco, this coming week. She must try to keep an open mind. Even so, she felt uneasy about this avowed Lucy and her several lies and evasions. She was startled out of her thoughts when the girl said: