“My son does not play in the Park,” Goddard responded with dignity. “He rides there with a class from the Academy on two mornings of the week but the season does not reopen until next month. Horace is delicate as I told you and has never cared for rough, physical exercise, although he is far from being a mollycoddle. He has a few friends of his own age but they are all still at their country homes; Mr. Trafford and I have telephoned to every one we can think of! Mrs. Goddard is prostrated and under the care of her physician; when she returned from Orbit’s musicale and learned of Horace’s disappearance she was almost beside herself. He is our only child, you know. If anything has happened to him—!”
He ran his hand violently through his scanty fringe of hair and McCarty observed:
“’Tis queer the lad didn’t tell you himself that Blaisdell was going away yesterday.”
“He hasn’t talked of him very much lately.” Goddard hesitated and then went on: “Horace is an unusual boy, very sensitive and reserved. I don’t pretend to understand him. He took it very much to heart when we declined to allow him to go on this sketching tour but, of course, it was out of the question; no one but an artist would have suggested such an impractical thing for a boy of his age, and with his frail constitution!—Damn that dog! He’ll drive me out of my mind!”
A doleful, long-drawn howl, subdued but eloquent, reached their ears from below-stairs and McCarty remembered his brief talk with the boy in that very room three days before.
“Is that Max, the police dog your son was telling me about when I called here?”
“Yes. He wandered around whining until I couldn’t stand it any longer and had him shut up. Devilish clever animal and devoted to Horry—knows there’s something wrong! By God, hear that! Midnight! What can have happened to my boy?”
He dropped into a chair burying his face in his hands as the clock struck and once more Dennis spoke.
“Have you any notion how much pocket money the lad had this day?”
It was Trafford who replied to him.