“Oh, if anything has happened to him!”
The intensity of feeling in her voice and look was something for which Larcher had not been prepared. It struck him to the heart, and for a time he was without speech for a reassuring word. Edna, though manifestly awed by this first full revelation of her friend's concern for Davenport, undertook promptly the office of banishing the alarm she had helped to raise.
“Oh, don't be frightened, dear. There's nothing serious, after all. Men often go where business calls them, without accounting to anybody. He's quite able to take care of himself. I'm sure it isn't as bad as Tom says.”
“As I say!” exclaimed Larcher. “I don't say it's bad at all. It's your own imagination, Edna,—your sudden and sensational imagination. There's no occasion for alarm, Miss Kenby. Men often, as Edna says—”
“But I must make sure,” interrupted Florence. “If anything is wrong, we're losing time. He must be sought for—the police must be notified.”
“His landlady—a very good woman, her name is Mrs. Haze—spoke of that, and she's the proper one to do it. But we decided, she and I, to wait awhile longer. You see, if the police took up the matter, and it got noised about, and Davenport reappeared in the natural order of things—as of course he will—why, how foolish we should all feel!”
“What do feelings of that sort matter, when deeper ones are concerned?”
“Nothing at all; but I'm thinking of Davenport's feelings. You know how he would hate that sort of publicity.”
“That must be risked. It's a small thing compared with his safety. Oh, if you knew my anxiety!”
“I understand, Miss Kenby. I'll have Mrs. Haze go to police headquarters at once. I'll go with her. And then, if there's still no news, I'll go around to the—to other places where people inquire in such cases.”