“Well, it’s happened,” she thought to herself as she tumbled from her bunk.
What she said to the dark-faced lady was done in a more official manner:
“I’m sure it can’t be far away. Someone has moved it by mistake. We’ll dress, then we will have a look.” Her tone was calm enough, though her heart was not.
They did dress and they did have a look—several looks, but all to no avail.
To Rosemary this was distressing. The whole affair had gone off so extremely well until now. Of course no one had wished to be delayed on the journey, but the evening in the lodge had been a delightful one. She had planned waffles with real maple syrup and coffee for breakfast. And now came this. It was disheartening.
Here in the gloom of early morning was the dark-faced woman claiming that her traveling bag had been taken. And who, in the end, could doubt it? It surely was not to be seen in the bunk room. Everything was turned over there except the dark one’s bunk which had been made up. And of course in a bunk flat as a pancake one does not look for a sizable traveling bag stuffed with all manner of things.
It was not in the large outer room either. When they went outside to see if some person might have crept in and taken it, or, as the dark-faced one insisted, “crept out to hide it” there was the clean white snow with never a track save the half-buried one of Mark Morris coming to report on the progress of the storm some hours before.
“It’s the strangest thing!” said Rosemary, for once finding herself quite out of bounds. “It can’t have gotten away. It just can’t!”
“I insist that every person in the place be searched!” the dark woman demanded.
“What! Search our pockets for a traveling bag?” A rotund drummer roared with laughter.