Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/167

 "Did not mean to be cross that day!" repeated Ruth Herrick, slowly. "What day?" She knit her straight brows in the effort to recall some memory of an office visit from some one who was cross—from some one who was named Miss Hope Abbott. "I shall have a relapse in exactly five minutes," she announced finally, "unless I solve this mystery."

But she did not solve it. To all appearances Miss Hope Abbott had vanished absolutely. In vain Miss Herrick sought information from her newspaper friends. In vain did she herself, after her return to her work on "The Searchlight," devote much of her time and skill to attempts to discover the identity of her mysterious caller. The newspaper woman who had never "let go" when she had gathered up the threads of a big "story," was forced to admit to herself that she was wholly at sea in this case.

She did, indeed, secure a clew from Tim, the office-boy, a lordly youth whose business it was to usher callers courteously into the presence of the man they had not come to see. Tim remembered Miss Abbott as a