“Of course; we understand,” McCarty darted a quick glance at Dennis and then turned to the tutor. “Trafford, Inspector Druet and another man are on their way up from headquarters and you’ll be helping matters if you tell the both of them what’s happened and all about them you ’phoned to for trace of the lad.”
In silence they followed Goddard to the tiny jewel-box of an elevator, whose velvet and gold and glittering crystal mirrors made Dennis gasp. He gasped again when their guide pressed a button and they shot abruptly upward and his weatherbeaten face turned a delicate green as they stopped with a smooth but sickening swoop at the second floor. He was the first out with the opening of the door, but there was no time for the aside which trembled on his lips, for Goddard led the way down the wide hall to the doorway in which the figure of an elderly maid was silhouetted against the dim light of the room within.
“Eustace!” A woman’s trembling voice sounded from behind her. “It can’t be that nothing is known, nothing! Did you tell them about that—”
“Everything is being done, Clara.” Goddard motioned the maid aside and McCarty and Dennis followed him into the dressing-room. They received only a confused impression of mahogany and old-rose and tall mirrors, of a faint, aromatic perfume and the sound of deep-drawn, convulsive breathing. The next moment their eyes were caught and held by the long figure outstretched upon a chaise-longue, imposing even in the dishevelled abandonment of grief. Mrs. Goddard was a woman well over forty, but her distraught face still bore traces of the beauty which must normally have been hers. There was no touch of gray in the masses of luxuriant dark hair which the maid had arranged with evident haste, but that night had etched lines about the fine eyes and the firm though sensitive mouth that would never be erased.
As her husband went on speaking, her glance swept past him to the two who waited at his elbow.
“Everything that is humanly possible is being done, my dear!” Goddard repeated more emphatically. “These are the police officers I called in, and they want to ask you a few questions. Do you think you can collect yourself enough to stick to facts and not foolish, morbid fancies?”
“I am quite collected, Eustace!” There was a note almost of defiance in Mrs. Goddard’s tones and she sat up among her pillows with an unconscious dignity, in spite of the emotion which she held in check with such obvious effort. “Ask me anything you please! I—I only want my baby safe once more!”
“Of course, ma’am,” McCarty responded soothingly. “You went out and left the lad on the couch in the library and when you came back to get ready for the musicale next door you thought he was with his teacher. Now, what was the first you knew of his disappearance?”
“When I returned from the musicale. It was late, after six, and my husband met me in the hall with the news. He and Mr. Trafford had been telephoning everywhere! They thought Horace might have gone to some of our friends, but he had never done such a thing as to leave the Mall without our knowledge and I knew that something terrible had happened. I could feel it—here!” Her slender, very white hands flew to her breast. “I cannot blame Mr. Trafford for not starting the search for Horace in the early afternoon; he supposed he had slipped away to the studio of an artist who has taken a great fancy to our little boy, but Mr. Blaisdell is not in town.”
The forced composure still held her and only her fluttering hands and quick-drawn breath gave evidence of her supreme agitation.