The dinner ended, however, and the missing ones had not returned.
“Might they have gone for a drive?” Macloud suggested.
The Captain shook his head. “The keys of the stable are on my desk, which shows that the horses are in for the night. I admit I am at a 276 loss—however, I reckon they will be in presently, with an explanation and a good laugh at us for being anxious.”
But when nine o’clock came, and then half-after-nine, and still they did not appear, the men grew seriously alarmed.
The Captain had recourse to the telephone again, getting residence after residence, without result. At last he hung up the receiver.
“I don’t know what to make of it,” he said, bewildered. “I’ve called every place I can think of, and I can’t locate them. What can have happened?”
“Let us see how the matter stands,” said Macloud. “We left them here about half-after-five, and, so far as can be ascertained, no one has seen them since. Consequently, they must have gone out for a walk or a drive. A drive is most unlikely, at this time of the day—it is dark and cold. Furthermore, your horses are in the stable, so, if they went, they didn’t go alone—some one drove them. The alternative—a walk—is the probable explanation; and that remits us to an accident as the cause of delay. Which, it seems to me, is the likely explanation.”
“But if there were an accident, they would have been discovered, long since; the walks are not deserted,” the Captain objected.
“Possibly, they went out of the town.”
“A young woman never goes out of town, unescorted,” 277 was the decisive answer. “This is a Southern town, you know.”