Page:The Better Sort (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1903).djvu/372

THE BETTER SORT to conduce directly to his more tremendously appearing, or certainly, and in the most striking manner, to his not in the least disappearing. The workshop of silence roars like the Zoo at dinner-time. He can't disappear; he hasn't weight enough to sink; the splash the diver makes, you know, tells where he is. If you ask me what I'm doing," Bight wound up, "I'm holding him under water. But we're in the middle of the pond, the banks are thronged with spectators, and I'm expecting from day to day to see stands erected and gate-money taken. There," he wearily smiled, "you have it. Besides," he then added with an odd change of tone, "I rather think you'll see to-morrow."

He had made her at last horribly nervous. "What shall I see?"

"It will all be out."

"Then why shouldn't you tell me?"

"Well," the young man said, "he has disappeared. There you are. I mean personally. He's not to be found. But nothing could make more, you see, for ubiquity. The country will ring with it. He vanished on Tuesday night—was then last seen at his club. Since then he has given no sign. How can a man disappear who does that sort of thing? It is, as you say, to caper on the housetops. But it will only be known to-night."

"Since when, then," Maud asked, "have you known it?"

"Since three o clock to-day. But I've kept it. I am—a while longer—keeping it."

She wondered; she was full of fears. "What do you expect to get for it?"

"Nothing—if you spoil my market. I seem to make out that you want to."

She gave this no heed; she had her thought. "Why then did you three days ago wire me a mystic word?"

"Mystic?" 360