The telephone shrilled like a crack of doom, and he fumblingly lifted the receiver as she waited.
"She hasn't been here, Rodrigo!" came John's anguished voice. "What am I to do? I don't know——"
"Don't lose your nerve, old man," Rodrigo replied, and his tones were weak, almost unrecognizable.
"I'm at my wits' end. I've questioned her aunt, the servants here, everybody."
"Come on back down here then, old man," urged Rodrigo. "We'll workout a plan. Don't worry. I'll be here waiting. Come right down."
He hung up the receiver, staring ahead of him, seeming unconscious that Mary was still there. When he became aware of her, he said as steadily as his trembling body allowed, "We'll all be upset terribly—for a while. Please—you will carry on temporarily, try to keep the place going, help us, won't you?"
She answered, "Yes, I will carry on. Don't worry about business. It will be all right." And her eyes too were full of tears.
CHAPTER XVII
Rodrigo sat on the edge of a chair in the living room of Henry Dorning's house at Greenwich. Near him, his frail body sunk deeply in the cushions of a large chair especially comfortably upholstered for his benefit, rested Henry Dorning. The attitude of both was one of nervous expectancy. Had you, however, been unacquainted personally with the two men and been told that one of them was a semi-invalid, you might have been excused for choosing Rodrigo as the ailing one. His lean face had grown thinner and his eyes were dark-ringed from the ordeal he was passing through. His clothing showed little trace of his usual sartorial fastidiousness. He fidgeted in his chair, and when he attempted to light a cigarette the match was held so unsteadily that the tobacco with difficulty caught fire. Henry Dorning, on the other hand, though affected very deeply by the plight of his son, maintained a surface calm that belied the turmoil within him.