"Mr. McCarthy disappeared! Where? When?" Betty Tabor had forgotten her jealousy in her startled alarm. "He isn't with the team?"
"I read it in the papers," sobbed Helen Baldwin. "He was at my house last evening. He left there—and he has disappeared. I hoped you might know."
"At your house?" Betty Tabor's alarm struggled with her jealousy. "And he's gone? Let me see the paper."
"I haven't seen him, Miss Baldwin," she said, after glancing at the paper. "We thought he had gone with the team. Tell me what you know. Perhaps we may help you. You were engaged to him, were you not?"
"We were—once," sobbed Helen Baldwin. "But that's all over. I did him a wrong. I never loved him—that way—and it's all my fault he's in trouble now."
Betty Tabor's heart leaped with a joy that overwhelmed all other emotions. Her cold attitude toward Helen Baldwin changed, and, sinking upon the seat beside the sobbing girl, she put her arm around her.
"There, there," she said comfortingly, as a mother might, forgetting that Helen Baldwin was older that she. "You must not blame yourself. Try to tell me what happened last evening. Perhaps we may know what to do."
Slowly, with interruptions by hysterical moments, Helen Baldwin told the story of her unconscious part in the conspiracy; of her alarm for the safety of McCarthy; how she had sent for him and warned him, and of Swanson's telephone call.
"You'd better go home, dear, and rest," Betty said finally. "There is nothing we can do. The men will have started the search early this morning and notified the police. He will return."
Helen Baldwin, calmed and reassured by the brave pretense of the younger woman, prepared to go home. Betty Tabor assisted her to rearrange her disordered fair hair, murmuring her admiration for it as she worked. For the first time a smile came to the troubled face of Helen Baldwin, and when she was ready to go she kissed Betty and held her at arm's length.