Page:The Black Cat November 1916.djvu/12

8 That very evening, as it happened. Miss Anita Maloney was requested to work over-time by Brace, the jewelry buyer. She, knowing her rights, lodged a vigorous protest with the superintendent. The latter gentleman, never having paid much previous attention to Anita, but now realizing that such pretty salesgirls for the jewelry counter were not easy to obtain, perceived the force of her argument and promptly told Brace to back up. All of which may not, at first thought, appear as matter germane to this particular chronicle, but, as will appear later, really has a rather important bearing on subsequent developments.

A period of some two months must be permitted to elapse before we can again take up the thread of events.

It was early September. David Belford, making his usual morning tour through the aisles of his store, paused at the ring counter, aware of a strangely unfamiliar aspect there. For a moment, he stood pulling at his bristling white moustache, attempting to puzzle out what particular thing was not as it should be. Suddenly he hit upon it; Miss Anita Maloney, she of the big brown orbs and the Cupid's bow lips, was not present.

For a brief moment, David Belford appeared in imminent danger of apoplexy; but it was not wholly Miss Maloney's absence that took his breath up short and made his heart pound an extra beat to the second; it was the icy recollection that his son, Frederick, had also been most unaccountably absent from home on the day and night previous.

Came forward Brace, the jewelry buyer, and to him Belford put the question that was filling his soul with a half dozen different varieties of anguish.

"Now then, Brace, what has became of the "rather prettyish salesgirl you had on rings?" inquired Belford. "McGuffy—Mahoney—ah, umm—Maloney! Yes, Miss Maloney, that was her name."

Brace fixed his eyes on a given point midway between his chief and the ring counter and wondered what Belford was really driving at. Having been away on a foreign buying trip for several weeks, he did not know why Miss Maloney was not present; but, catching sight of Miss Julia Levy, he informed his chief that he would inquire. Thus answered Miss Levy:

"Gee, Mr. Brace, didn't you know? Maloney give in her notice more'n a week ago. She got hitched up last night."

Belford heard. "What!" he bellowed, and then fled with a speed that almost equalled that with which his own son had once quitted the same counter. Something assured him the worst had happened. He stumbled into his private office, gripped the desk telephone and called for two-three-six Riverside, his town house.

"Has Frederick arrived home yet?" was the question he hurled into the mouthpiece.

The silky voice of Fanning, his butler, answered from the other end of the wire. "I do not know, sir, but I will find out at once."

Belford dropped into a chair and began to drum impatiently with fat fingers on the mahogany desk. He was beginning to see a little more