The Friday morning when Suzanne was to go to town broke auspiciously
bright and cloudless. As Annie was not the proper person to take Bébita
to the oculist, and as Suzanne would be too busy to go herself, Miss
Maitland had been impressed into the service. It had been decided two
days earlier, and though she had received some instructions at the time,
on the drive in, Mrs. Price went over her plans with a meticulous
thoroughness. They would go first to the Fifth Avenue house, pick up
there some clothes of Bébita’s needing alteration, and then separate.
Esther would take a cab from the rank on the side street, and go with
Bébita to the oculist, to the dressmaker with the clothes, and execute
several minor commissions in shops along the Avenue. Bébita begged for a
box of caramels from Justin’s, the French confectioner, a request which
was graciously acceded to by her mother, Miss Maitland jotting it down
on her list. Mrs. Price would take the motor and go about her own
affairs, which would occupy probably an hour. She would then return to
the house and wait for them—for she would have finished before they
did—and afterward they would go out to lunch somewhere. She said she
thought it would be fully an hour and a half before they got back and
Miss Maitland, eyeing the long list, said it might be even longer.
Aggie McGee had the clothes tied up in a box and Suzanne and Bébita
stood on the steps waiting while Miss Maitland went for the cab. The
rank was just round the corner and in a few minutes she came back with a
taxi 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."
Bébita jumped in, settling herself with joyful prancings and waving a
little white-gloved hand. Esther followed, snapped the door shut, and
they glided away. Suzanne watched them go, then stepped into the big
motor and was swept off in the opposite direction.
She came back before the hour was up. She had hurried as she wanted to
have done with Larkin before they returned. It would be extremely
uncomfortable if they found her in confab with the detective; it would
necessitate boring explanations and the inventing of lies.
She sat down in the reception room close to the window, pulled up the
blind and waited. Drawn back from the eyes of passers-by she could
command the sidewalk and the street for some distance and if, by any
evil chance, Larkin should be late, she could see him coming and tell
Aggie McGee to say she was not there.
Up to now Larkin had been punctual to the dot, but on this, the one
occasion when punctuality was vital, he was not on time. Twelve passed,
then the quarter, and the sun-swept length of the great avenue gave up
no masculine figure that bore any resemblance to him. She was growing
nervous, wondering what she had better do, when he hove in sight walking
quickly toward the house. A glance at her wrist watch told her it was
twenty minutes past twelve—Miss Maitland and Bébita might not be back
for another half hour yet. She would chance it, for she was extremely
anxious 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 they
had gone. Relieved by the decision she rose and was turning toward the
mirror, when she caught sight of a taxi scudding up the street with
Esther Maitland’s face in the window.
A word not generally used by ladies escaped Suzanne. There was nothing
for 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 door
bell. Suzanne, who had noticed that the taxi was moving fast and would
make the steps before Larkin, called down on Aggie McGee’s ascending
head:
"That’s Miss Maitland. A gentleman I expected is just behind her. I
can’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 the
door opening, Esther’s step in the hall; it was all right, the detective
would get his congé without being seen by any one but Aggie McGee. She
drew 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 look
over the room and said in a low, breathless voice as if she had been
running:
"Is Bébita here?"
There was a moment of silence. Through it the heavy tread of Aggie McGee
passing along the hall sounded unnaturally loud. As it went clump,
clump, down the kitchen stairs Suzanne was aware of Miss Maitland’s
face, startlingly strange, ashen-colored. At first it was all she took
in.
"Bébita—here?" she stammered. "How could she be? She’s with you."
Miss Maitland made a step into the room, her hands went up clenched to
her 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 come
back. Oh, Mrs. Price—" she stopped, her eyes, telling a message of
disaster, fixed on the other.
Suzanne’s answer came from opened lips, dropped apart in a sudden
horror:
"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 leathern
stiffness:
"No—no—nothing like that. But—the taxi—it went, disappeared while I was
in Justin’s. I was in there buying the candy and when I came out it was
gone. I looked everywhere; I couldn’t believe it; I thought she’d come
back here—run away from me for a joke."
Suzanne, holding the sides of her head, stared like a mad woman, then
gave a piercing cry, thin and high, a wild, dolorous sound. Only the
solidity of the house prevented it from penetrating to the lower regions
where Aggie McGee and her aunt were comfortably lunching.
"Listen, Mrs. Price." Esther took her hands and drew them down. "The
driver 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 its
conviction of the grisly thought. Esther tried to speak, the sentences
dropping disconnected:
"If it’s that then—then—it’s some one who knows you’re rich—some
one—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 done
it! You’ll be put in jail."
With the words issuing from her mouth she staggered and crumpled into a
limpness of fiberless flesh and trailing garments. Esther put an arm
about her and drew her to the sofa. Here she collapsed amid the
cushions, her eyes open, moans coming from her shaking lips. Esther
knelt beside her:
"Mrs. Price, it’s horrible, but try to keep up, don’t break down this
way. No one would dare to do anything to her. If she’s been stolen it’s
to the interest of the person who did it to keep her safe. We’ll find
her in a day or two. Your mother, her position, her power—she’ll do
something, she’ll get her back."
Suzanne rolling her head on the cushion, groaned:
"Oh, my baby! Oh, Bébita!" Then burst into wild tears and disjointed
sentences. She was almost unintelligible, cries to heaven, wails for her
child, 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 to
herself than the anguished creature on the sofa:
"We can’t waste time this way. I’ll call up Grasslands and ask what to
do."
The telephone was in the hall and, as she waited for the connection, she
could hear the sounds of the mother’s misery beating on the house’s rich
silence. Then Dixon’s voice brought her faculties into quick order. She
wanted to speak to Mrs. Janney herself, at once, it was important. There
followed what seemed an endless wait, and then Mrs. Janney. When she had
mastered 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 could
hear the tiny echo of voices, then the jar of an approaching step and a
man answered:
"Hello, Miss Maitland, this is Ferguson. I’ve orders from Mrs. Janney—Go
straight down to the Whitney office, tell them what’s happened 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 quickly as they can
get there and will meet you at the office. Got that straight? All right.
Good-by."
She cogitated a moment, then called up the Whitney office getting
George. She gave him a brief outline of what had occurred and told him
she would be there with Mrs. Price within a half hour.
Back in the reception room she tried to arouse Suzanne, but the
distracted woman did not seem to have sense left to take in anything. At
the sound of Esther’s voice her sobs and wails rose hysterical, and the
girl, finding it impossible to make her understand, set about preparing
her for the drive. Any word of hers appeared to make Suzanne’s state
worse, so silently, as if she were dressing a manikin, she pinned the
hat to the disordered blonde hair, draped a motor veil over it, composed
the rumpled skirts, gathered up her purse and gloves, and finally, an
arm crooked round one of Suzanne’s, got her out to the motor.
On the long drive downtown almost nothing was said. The roar of the
surrounding traffic drowned the sounds of weeping that now and then rose
from the veiled figure, which Esther held firm and upright by the
pressure of her shoulder.