Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/237

 stockings, night-dresses and lingerie she might have taken, and probably had; he had no census of such garments. Some were left in her drawers but, he believed, not as many as she had. She had left her rings, pins and necklaces.

"What does she mean to do to herself?" he put his terror for her into coherent demand. Self-destruction, of course, suggested itself to him; for a moment he imagined her, clad in that low-cut dress in which last she had been innocently happy, casting herself into the lake. Then he denied that fright; she was doing something extreme, he was sure of that, but she was not stupid enough to satisfy herself with suicide. No; then what—what to punish him? More frightful images than of Marjorie white and still in the waters of the lake seized him.

Of course he telephoned to Billy, with the result only of terrifying Bill, who could not tell him anything useful. He telephoned also to Rinderfeld, not suspecting that Rinderfeld knew and therefore he only informed Rinderfeld of what had happened. Rinderfeld questioned him fully, noted the answers and never let him dream that in his address book, and transcribed in a code so that no one finding it could read, was the number on Clearedge Street where Marjorie was.

He drove up there later in the evening, Rinderfeld, with no premature intention of calling upon her, but only to look the ground over; and this was as well for him, since Marjorie, after delaying her arrival for a week, was wasting no time in getting started in the new society she had entered. Clara Seeley was going to a dance that night and she had not only invited Marjorie but had supplied her with one of her own friends