For a moment she stood in the middle of the room, dazed, wondering what could have happened. The door was closed. Bessie rushed to it, and looked out, but there was no sign of Zara in the hall. She listened intently. The house was silent, with the silence that broods over a well regulated house at night, when everyone is or ought to be asleep. But then there was a noise from outside—a noise that came through the windows, from the street.
Bessie rushed back into the room and over to the window. She knew now that the noise she heard was the same one that had awakened her.
And, looking out of the window, Bessie saw what had made the noise—a big, green automobile, that, even as she looked, was gliding slowly but with increasing speed away from the Mercer house. She stood rooted to the spot, unable to cry out, or to make a move. But somehow, though she could never explain afterward how it happened, since the importance of it did not strike her at all at the time, Bessie managed to get a mental photograph of one thing that was to prove important in the extreme—the number of the automobile, plainly visible in the light of the tail lamp that shone full upon it. The figures were registered in her brain as if she had studied them for an hour in the effort to memorize them—4587.
Then, when the car was out of sight around the corner, Bessie's power of movement seemed to be restored to her as mysteriously as it had been taken away. Her first impulse was to cry out and arouse the household. But the futility of that soon struck her, and she remembered what Charlie Jamieson had said. If anything happened, if she was frightened, she was to call on him. And certainly something had happened. Of her alarm there could be no doubt. She was shaking like a leaf, as if she were exposed to a cold wind, although the night was hot and even sultry.
Swiftly she sought for and found the telephone number the lawyer had written down for her. Then, in her bare feet, lest she make a noise and arouse the whole household, she crept downstairs to reach the telephone.
"Oh, I do hope they won't see me or hear me," she breathed to herself. "There's nothing they can do, and maybe, if I get hold of Mr. Jamieson at once, we can have Zara back before they know she's gone."
At that hour of the night it was hard work to get the connection she wanted, and Bessie chafed at the delay, knowing that every moment might be precious, were Zara in real danger. But she got the number at last, after Central had tried to convince her no one would answer at such a time.
"What's happened? Has something gone wrong?" Jamieson asked anxiously as soon as he recognized her voice.
"Oh, I'm terribly afraid it has—and it was all my fault! I was asleep, Mr. Jamieson—and Zara's gone!"
"By herself, or don't you know?"