Scarcely knowing what he did, Drayton crossed the room and lifted the telephone receiver from its hook.
"Hello, hello! What? Yes, this is James Burford's home. What's that? Mr.-Mr. Trenmore? Yes; he's here. No-I–I mean, he was here a moment ago. No; I don't know where he is or when he will be back. My God, I wish I did! What's that? You are-whom did you say?… Oh, my Lord!"
Drayton dropped the receiver and stood staring in blank horror. After a while, leaving the receiver to dangle and click unheeded, he turned and walked slowly back toward the chair on whose broad arm Terence Trenmore's cigar still glowed behind a lengthening ash. With a slight shudder he forced himself to pass his hands carefully over the chair's entire inner surface, seat, arms, and back. The leather covering retained a trace of warmth from its recent occupant; but it was most indubitably empty.
The enormity, the unprecedented horror of the whole situation swept up on Drayton like a rising tide, wiping out for a time all thought of the telephone or the person to whom he had just been speaking. With a dazed, sick look he again circled the newspaper and its burden, righted his own chair, and sat down. He had a queer feeling that some one had just played a particularly cruel practical joke of which he was the victim.
And yet-what if that gray Dust had really possessed just the terrific, unbelievable history with which Trenmore had credited it?
He strove to arrange his facts and premises in a logical and reasonable order, but found himself continually returning to that one scene-he, Drayton, sitting where he now sat; Trenmore opposite, bending over the paper; the cloud that rose, gray and nebulous, and hung in the air after his friend was gone.
Presently he was again roused from his stupor, and again by a bell. The sound came faintly from the rear of the house. Drayton waited, thinking to hear Martin pass through the reception hall on his way to the front door. Again the bell rang, and this time in a long, steady, insistent peal. Some one seemed to have placed a finger on the button and determined that it should not be removed until the door opened. Martin must be out, on an errand perhaps.
Half dazedly, as he had answered the phone, Drayton at length responded to this new demand. As he unlocked the front door and opened it a burst of summer sunshine rushed in and with it the small, angry figure of a much perturbed young lady.
"Where is he? What has happened to my brother? Who was that man at the telephone? Answer me instantly, I say! Where is my brother, Terry Trenmore?"
The questions beat upon Drayton's ears like blows, rousing him to some semblance of his normal self-possession.