"It's still snowing there?"
"Yes, Miss Sherrill. We've had a message from your father. He has gone on to Manistique; it's more likely that wreckage or survivors will be brought in there."
The telephone switchboard beside Constance suddenly buzzed, and the operator, plugging in a connection, said: "Yes, sir; at once," and through the partitions of the private office on the other side, a man's heavy tones came to Constance. That was Henry's office and, in timbre, the voice was his, but it was so strange in other characteristics of expression that she waited an instant before saying to the clerk,
"Mr. Spearman has come in?"
The clerk hesitated, but the continuance of the tone from the other side of the partition made reply superfluous. "Yes, Miss Sherrill."
"Did you tell him that mother and I were here?"
The clerk considered again before deciding to reply in the affirmative. There evidently was some trouble with the telephone number which Henry had called; the girl at the switchboard was apologizing in frightened panic, and Henry's voice, loud and abusive, came more plainly through the partition. Constance started to give an instruction to the clerk; then, as the abuse burst out again, she changed her plan and went to Henry's door and rapped. Whether no one else rapped in that way or whether he realized that she might have come into the general office, she did not know; but at once his voice was still. He made no answer and no move to open the door; so, after waiting a moment, she turned the knob and went in.
Henry was seated at his desk, facing her, his big hands before him; one of them held the telephone receiver. He lifted it slowly and put it upon the hook beside the transmitter as he watched her with steady, silent, aggressive scrutiny. His face was flushed a little—not much; his hair was carefully brushed, and there was something about his clean-shaven appearance and the set of his perfectly fitting coat, one which he did not ordinarily wear to business, which seemed studied. He did not rise; only after a moment he recollected that he had not done so and came to his feet. "Good morning, Connie," he said. "Come in. What's the news?"
There was something strained and almost menacing in his voice and in his manner which halted her. She in some way—or her presence at that moment—appeared to be definitely disturbing him. It frightened him, she would have thought, except that the idea was a contradiction. Henry frightened? But if he was not, what emotion now controlled him?
The impulse which had brought her into his office went from her. She had not seen nor heard from Henry directly since before Alan's telegram had come late yesterday afternoon; she had heard from her father only that he had informed Henry; that was all.