CHAPTER XV--WHAT HAPPENED ON FRIDAY
The Friday morning when Suzanne was to go to town broke auspiciouslybright and cloudless. As Annie was not the proper person to take Bebitato the oculist, and as Suzanne would be too busy to go herself, MissMaitland had been impressed into the service. It had been decided twodays earlier, and though she had received some instructions at the time,on the drive in, Mrs. Price went over her plans with a meticulousthoroughness. They would go first to the Fifth Avenue house, pick upthere some clothes of Bebita's needing alteration, and then separate.Esther would take a cab from the rank on the side street, and go withBebita to the oculist, to the dressmaker with the clothes, and executeseveral minor commissions in shops along the Avenue. Bebita begged for abox of caramels from Justin's, the French confectioner, a request whichwas graciously acceded to by her mother, Miss Maitland jotting it downon her list. Mrs. Price would take the motor and go about her ownaffairs, which would occupy probably an hour. She would then return tothe house and wait for them--for she would have finished before theydid--and afterward they would go out to lunch somewhere. She said shethought it would be fully an hour and a half before they got back andMiss Maitland, eyeing the long list, said it might be even longer.
Aggie McGee had the clothes tied up in a box and Suzanne and Bebitastood on the steps waiting while Miss Maitland went for the cab. Therank was just round the corner and in a few minutes she came back with ataxi running along the curb behind her.
"Quite a piece of luck to find one," she said, as she took the box."They're not always there in the dead season."
Bebita jumped in, settling herself with joyful prancings and waving alittle white-gloved hand. Esther followed, snapped the door shut, andthey glided away. Suzanne watched them go, then stepped into the bigmotor and was swept off in the opposite direction.
She came back before the hour was up. She had hurried as she wanted tohave done with Larkin before they returned. It would be extremelyuncomfortable if they found her in confab with the detective; it wouldnecessitate boring explanations and the inventing of lies.
She sat down in the reception room close to the window, pulled up theblind and waited. Drawn back from the eyes of passers-by she couldcommand the sidewalk and the street for some distance and if, by anyevil chance, Larkin should be late, she could see him coming and tellAggie McGee to say she was not there.
Up to now Larkin had been punctual to the dot, but on this, the oneoccasion when punctuality was vital, he was not on time. Twelve passed,then the quarter, and the sun-swept length of the great avenue gave upno masculine figure that bore any resemblance to him. She was growingnervous, wondering what she had better do, when he hove in sight walkingquickly toward the house. A glance at her wrist watch told her it wastwenty minutes past twelve--Miss Maitland and Bebita might not be backfor another half hour yet. She would chance it, for she was extremelyanxious to see him, and anyway, if they should come in before he left,she could tell him to go into the drawing room and slip out after theyhad gone. Relieved by the decision she rose and was turning toward themirror, when she caught sight of a taxi scudding up the street withEsther Maitland's face in the window.
A word not generally used by ladies escaped Suzanne. There was nothingfor it but to send him away. She ran into the hall and pressed the bell,listening in a fever for Aggie McGee's step on the kitchen stairs.Simultaneously with its first heavy thud came the peal of the front doorbell. Suzanne, who had noticed that the taxi was moving fast and wouldmake the steps before Larkin, called down on Aggie McGee's ascendinghead:
"That's Miss Maitland. A gentleman I expected is just behind her. Ican't see him now, I haven't time. Tell him I've been here and gone."
She went back into the reception room and stood listening. She heard thedoor opening, Esther's step in the hall; it was all right, the detectivewould get his conge without being seen by any one but Aggie McGee. Shedrew a breath of relief and turned smiling to the girl in the doorway.Miss Maitland did not give back the smile; she sent a searching lookover the room and said in a low, breathless voice as if she had beenrunning:
"Is Bebita here?"
There was a moment of silence. Through it the heavy tread of Aggie McGeepassing along the hall sounded unnaturally loud. As it went clump,clump, down the kitchen stairs Suzanne was aware of Miss Maitland'sface, startlingly strange, ashen-colored. At first it was all she tookin.
"Bebita--here?" she stammered. "How could she be? She's with you."
Miss Maitland made a step into the room, her hands went up clenched toher chest, her voice came again through the broken gasps of a runner:
"No--she isn't. I thought I'd find her with you--I thought she'd comeback. Oh, Mrs. Price--" she stopped, her eyes, telling a message ofdisaster, fixed on the other.
Suzanne's answer came from opened lips, dropped apart in a suddenhorror:
"What do you mean? Why should she be here?"
"Mrs. Price, something's happened!"
Suzanne screamed out:
"Where is she?"
"I don't know--but--but--I haven't got her--she's gone. Mrs. Price--"
Suzanne screamed again, putting her hands against the sides of her head,her face, between them, a livid mask.
"Gone--gone where? Is she dead?"
The girl shook her head, swallowing on a throat dried to a leathernstiffness:
"No--no--nothing like that. But--the taxi--it went, disappeared while Iwas in Justin's. I was in there buying the candy and when I came out itwas gone. I looked everywhere; I couldn't believe it; I thought she'dcome back here--run away from me for a joke."
Suzanne, holding the sides of her head, stared like a mad woman, thengave a piercing cry, thin and high, a wild, dolorous sound. Only thesolidity of the house prevented it from penetrating to the lower regionswhere Aggie McGee and her aunt were comfortably lunching.
"Listen, Mrs. Price." Esther took her hands and drew them down. "Thedriver may have made a mistake, taken her somewhere else--he couldn't--"
Suzanne shrieked in sudden frenzy:
"She's been stolen--my baby's been stolen!"
For a second they looked at one another, each pallid face confessing itsconviction of the grisly thought. Esther tried to speak, the sentencesdropping disconnected:
"If it's that then--then--it's some one who knows you're rich--someone--they'll want money. They'll give her up for money--Oh, Mrs. Price,I looked--I hunted--"
Suzanne's voice came in a suddenly strangled whisper:
"It's you--It's your fault! You've let them steal my baby. You've doneit! You'll be put in jail."
With the words issuing from her mouth she staggered and crumpled into alimpness of fiberless flesh and trailing garments. Esther put an armabout her and drew her to the sofa. Here she collapsed amid thecushions, her eyes open, moans coming from her shaking lips. Estherknelt beside her:
"Mrs. Price, it's horrible, but try to keep up, don't break down thisway. No one would dare to do anything to her. If she's been stolen it'sto the interest of the person who did it to keep her safe. We'll findher in a day or two. Your mother, her position, her power--she'll dosomething, she'll get her back."
Suzanne rolling her head on the cushion, groaned:
"Oh, my baby! Oh, Bebita!" Then burst into wild tears and disjointedsentences. She was almost unintelligible, cries to heaven, wails for herchild, accusations of the woman at her feet broke from her in a torrent.Once she struck at the girl with a feeble fist.
There was no help to be got from her and Esther rose. She spoke more toherself than the anguished creature on the sofa:
"We can't waste time this way. I'll call up Grasslands and ask what todo."
The telephone was in the hall and, as she waited for the connection, shecould hear the sounds of the mother's misery beating on the house's richsilence. Then Dixon's voice brought her faculties into quick order. Shewanted to speak to Mrs. Janney herself, at once, it was important. Therefollowed what seemed an endless wait, and then Mrs. Janney
. When she hadmastered it, her voice came, sharp and incisive:
"Hold the wire, I have to speak to Mr. Janney."
Another wait, through which, faint as the shadows of sound, Esther couldhear the tiny echo of voices, then the jar of an approaching step and aman answered:
"Hello, Miss Maitland, this is Ferguson. I've orders from Mrs.Janney--Go straight down to the Whitney office, tell them what'shappened and put the thing in their hands. Say nothing to anybody else.Mr. and Mrs. Janney are starting to go in. They'll be in town as quicklyas they can get there and will meet you at the office. Got thatstraight? All right. Good-by."
She cogitated a moment, then called up the Whitney office gettingGeorge. She gave him a brief outline of what had occurred and told himshe would be there with Mrs. Price within a half hour.
Back in the reception room she tried to arouse Suzanne, but thedistracted woman did not seem to have sense left to take in anything. Atthe sound of Esther's voice her sobs and wails rose hysterical, and thegirl, finding it impossible to make her understand, set about preparingher for the drive. Any word of hers appeared to make Suzanne's stateworse, so silently, as if she were dressing a manikin, she pinned thehat to the disordered blonde hair, draped a motor veil over it, composedthe rumpled skirts, gathered up her purse and gloves, and finally, anarm crooked round one of Suzanne's, got her out to the motor.
On the long drive downtown almost nothing was said. The roar of thesurrounding traffic drowned the sounds of weeping that now and then rosefrom the veiled figure, which Esther held firm and upright by thepressure of her shoulder.