“Wait until morning,” Harleston interjected. “If Mrs. Clephane hasn’t appeared by nine o’clock, I’ll telephone you.”
Harleston leaned back in his chair frowning. Washington was not a large city, yet under certain circumstances she could be lost in it—and stay lost, with all the efforts of the police quite unavailing to find her. It seemed improbable that she had been abducted; as Ranleigh had said, they had nothing to gain from her. She could neither advance their plans nor hinder them; she was purely a negative quantity. Spencer might be striking at him through Mrs. Clephane, intending to hold her surety for his neutrality, or to feed her own revenge, or maybe both. Yet, somehow, he could not hold to the notion; it was too petty for their game. Moreover, Spencer knew that it would be ineffective, and she was not one to waste time in methods, petty or inefficient. Of course, it might be that she had merely twitted him about the episode, as a jealous woman would do.
And yet what could have taken Mrs. Clephane from the hotel at such an hour, and without apprising her maid; and why was she driving up Sixteenth Street? Or was Spencer’s talk just a lie; intended to throw a scare into him and give him a bad quarter of an hour—until he would venture to call up Mrs. Clephane’s apartment? And if he did not venture, the bad quarter would last the balance of the night. At all events and whatever her idea Madeline Spencer had succeeded in disturbing him to an unusual degree—and all because of Mrs. Clephane.
At last he sprang up, threw on a light top-coat, grabbed a hat, and made for the door. He would go down to the Chateau and investigate. Anything was preferable to this miserable waiting.
The corridor door was swinging shut behind him, when his telephone buzzed. He flung back the door and reached the receiver in a bound.
“Yes!” he exclaimed.
“I forgot to say, Guy,” came Madeline Spencer’s purring voice, “that I’ll tell you in the morning, if you care to pay me a visit, how my alter ego came to be on Sixteenth Street at so unusual an hour. It’s rather interesting as to details. By the way, you must be sitting beside the receiver expecting a call; you answered with such amazing promptness!” and she laughed softly. “Shall I expect you at eleven, or will you be content to wait until we go to the Department at four?”
“I had just finished talking with Mrs. Clephane when you called,” Harleston replied imperturbably, then laughed mockingly. “I’ll be at the Chateau for you at half-after-three; you can give me the details then. I shall be delighted, Madeline, to compare your details with hers.”
“I wonder!” said she.
“What do you wonder?” said he.