When Webb asked him to be best man, he hesitated but a moment and then agreed to do so.
And now, in the mysterious emergency that had come upon them all, Whiting was endeavouring to do whatever he could and whatever Elsie wished him to do, to be of any possible help or comfort.
“I think,” Mrs. Powell said, as the evening wore on, “we’ll send Elsie to bed now. You’ve been a good friend, Fenn; I don’t know what we should have done without you. Now, what are we going to do next?”
“What is there to do?” spoke up Gerty. “We can do nothing but wait for Kimball to return,—and for my part I don’t believe he ever will. I think there’s more to this thing than a disappearance,—I think you’ll find there’s been a crime—”
“Oh, hush, Gert!” wailed Elsie. “I’ve been afraid somebody would say that! I won’t think of it! Anyway, not tonight! And it isn’t true! It can’t be true!”
On the verge of a breakdown, after her trying day, Elsie ran out of the room, and her mother followed, bidding Whiting a brief good night as she passed him.
Left alone with Gerty Seaman, Whiting asked if she had any errand he might do for her, and then he proposed to say good night.
“No,” said Gerty, “there’s nothing more to be done tonight, I should say,—but, oh, Fenn, what do you think of it all?”
“What is there to think, Gerty? Every one of us knows as much as the next one about it,—and who among us can suggest even a possible explanation?”
“Nobody can,—and yet, Fenn, there must be an explanation. I mean,—Kimball did get out of his room—”