Page:More lives than one.djvu/58



“I will. Wait a minute—must I face the whole crowd of revelers?”

“I understand. No, Mr. Barham. Come—let me see—come to the front door but ask the man in charge to bring you up the back stairway.”

“Oh, it needn’t be as secret as that—but—I can’t seem to think coherently. Washington Square! I’ll be there in record time.”

With his usual efficiency and avoidance of all waste motion, Andrew Barham had summoned his valet, and his chauffeur, and had ordered his car while he was getting into his clothes.

Prall, the valet, came in to find him already almost entirely dressed.

With a few quick, somewhat jerky words, he explained the situation to his trusted servant, saying, “Come with me, Prall, I think it’s very serious.”

Awed by the look on his master’s face, Prall bowed a silent assent, and in the shortest possible time, they were speeding down the Avenue, careful only to avoid a hold up by the traffic squad.

“Did you ever know of Mrs. Barham’s going to any place on Washington Square, Prall?”

“Never, sir.”

And Andrew Barham wondered.

Madeleine had said he was always wondering, but surely he had never before had such occasion for wonderment. Madeleine, at a fancy dress ball—in Washington Square, and—hurt—didn’t that man say fatally hurt?

To be sure, Madeleine went where she chose—she had her own friends—but Barham knew who they were, if he didn’t know them personally; and they were of her own circles, most certainly not of a Washington Square type.

So he wondered, blindly, and at last they were there.