But instead she glanced down under the table and cried in alarm, “Where’s Tony? Tony isn’t here!”
Tony wasn’t there—he had disappeared. He had licked his dish as clean as clean could be and then had vanished.
“I’ll find him—likely as not he is prowling around the restaurant, in the main room,” said Uncle Hiram. “You two children stay here and I’ll round up the culprit. We can’t allow mutiny on board this craft.”
Uncle Hiram went out through the curtains and Elizabeth Ann and Doris waited. He didn’t come back and he didn’t come back.
“I can’t go away and leave him here,” whispered Elizabeth Ann, feeling as though she would like to cry. “He would be so unhappy if he found out I’d gone off with Uncle Hiram and left him.”
“Serve him right,” Doris said rather crossly. “Anyway, Uncle Hiram won’t let you stay here to wait for Tony; if that cat doesn’t come back, you’ll just have to go and leave him.”
Doris, you see, was a little tired and as people often are, who have been ill, inclined to be cross. She didn’t want Elizabeth Ann to be unhappy, but neither did she want to have their journey interrupted by a search for Elizabeth Ann’s cat.
“I just have to find him,” said Elizabeth Ann. “I’m going to open that door and see where it goes.”
She pointed to a door in the wall behind them—a closed door. But it wasn’t a locked door for it opened when Elizabeth Ann turned the knob, and there was a flight of steps leading down to the cellar.
“You’d better stay right here,” Doris told her, and that was certainly good advice.