"Sit," I said, "and eat—or otherwise you'll force me to leave the lady and go with you. She has a date after dinner, anyhow."
He groaned and sat down—nipping the menu from the waiter's hands roughly. "No news."
"Tough." I turned to Yvonne. "His—fiancée—is lost."
"How awful! What happened?"
Paul glared at me for a moment. "Your friend Dave," he finally said, in a tone more polite than his facial expression, "did all he could. Got an agency looking. Sent a fellow over to stay in my—our—place. We hunted up some more friends of hers—that Dave got track of—and they told us of others. We've been seeing them. It isn't much fun."
"Why not quit, then? Wait for her?"
"If all she did was walk out," Yvonne agreed, "that's absolutely the only thing to do. Sit tight. Have a good time. Suppose she finds out you're apparently raising heaven and earth to locate her? She'll just hide in a safe spot and enjoy things that much more."
Paul turned to her. "Are you serious?"
Yvonne was working on him—signaling interest with her gray eyes (they had come considerably alive)—tossing the organized gold shower of her hair—moving herself about in such a way as to emphasize her sex. "It's a darned good generalization. But what happened?"