“I am sorry to disturb you, Herr Stuer,” said I, “but will you kindly tell me when Miss Carlotta left you, this morning?”
“Miss Carlotta came not at all this morning,” he replied.
“But it was her regular day?”
“At ten o’clock. She did not come. At eleven I have another pupil. She has not before missed one lesson.”
I flew back home, in an agony of hope that her laughing face would meet me there and dispel a dread that chilled me like an icy wind.
There was no Carlotta.
There has been no Carlotta all this awful day.
There will never be a Carlotta again.
I drove to the police station.
“What do you think has happened?” asked the Inspector.