was more than a little annoyed, for some reason, or I expect I’d have used more tact.
“She knows perfectly well Laurel Frazier isn’t in love with Myron Kane, but she’s perfectly willing to sell her down the river just to stop him from writing that profile or to get back that document, whatever it is—one or both. I’ll be willing to bet anything she and Myron have made a deal. She wrote me yesterday and said Laurel ought to be terribly grateful to Travis Elliot and she thought they’d be married soon. Now she’s made a complete about-face. She’s counting on all of you to make Laurel so unhappy she’ll marry Myron. If that doesn’t work, she’ll probably put it to her, on the grounds that it’ll save your father, because she knows the girl adores him and thinks this is all her fault. And if I were you, I’d be ashamed to have any part in it.”
I stopped, rather appalled at my own temerity, and also startled at the towering structure I’d built up on the patch of quicksand of fact I’d overheard in the Broad Street Station.
“Well, of course I may be entirely wrong,” I added hastily. “I haven’t—I mean I guess I said that because I think you’re being a little rough on her.”
He stood there silently, thinking it over. “I wonder,” he said. “Could be.” He looked around the room. “Did she do all this?”
He indicated the hastily pushed-in drawers and littered papers. I nodded. He went around methodically straightening things up, still pretty sober-faced, picked up one or two of Myron’s unfinished paragraphs lying on the floor, glanced at them and dropped them into the wastebasket.
“You think she’s really in love with Travis?” he asked, looking at me. “And don’t get me wrong, lady.” His grin completely changed his whole face. “When I fall in love it’s going to be with a gentle cow creature, so there’ll be peace in the home. And Travis is my best friend. I just wondered, that’s all.”
“I wouldn’t know, really,” I said. “I never saw her till today.”
“You never saw Aunt Abby till today, either, did you?”
We both laughed, and then we looked quickly at each other. Myron Kane was coming in. I could hear his voice booming up the stair well as he tried to make the old butler hear it was a nasty day out. It was, and not a lot better in, I thought as I hurried along to my room in the front and Monk Whitney went down the stairs. I could see him in the mirror there, going into his aunt’s room. In a minute, I heard Myron whistling as he came up, and the door of his room close. It opened again shortly, and I waited about ten minutes before I followed him downstairs.
4
Mrs. Whitney and Myron were in her room. I could see her in the mirror just inside the door, but not him. She must have given him some signal, because his voice rose suddenly, expansively anecdotal with something about an Eastern ambassador. “. . . and I said, ‘Effendi——’ ”
He stopped so abruptly, seeing me, that I saw while he knew someone was coming he didn’t know it was to be his unwitting sponsor in the house. And it must have taken him all of a second to rally himself.
“Why, Grade!” he exclaimed cordially, and I hate to be called “Grade.” “How very nice!”
He came toward me and gave me an affectionate kiss on the cheek. I hadn’t, I guess, realized what close friends we were, and I don’t think Mrs. Whitney was fooled either.
“Yes, isn’t it Pleasant?” she said. “And didn’t you bring a Letter for our Friend, Dear Child?”
“Yes, I did,” I said. I’d forgotten it entirety in the press of interim business. I went over to the table where I’d left it with my bag when she’d dismissed Travis Elliot and me so peremptorily. “It’s from a fan; he thinks you’re divine.”
I picked up my bag, but Mr. Toplady’s letter wasn’t under it. I looked inside. It wasn’t there either.
“That’s very funny,” I said. “I thought I left it here.”
I knew I had, in fact.
“It must be Somewhere, Dear Child,” Mrs. Whitney said, without concern. “Or did you take it upstairs?”
I shook my head.
“Oh, well,” Myron said.
It was spoken as by a public favorite to whom another fan letter was as a drop to the ocean, a grain to the desert. He’d returned to the mantel and was standing there with his elbow on it, at ease with himself and the world.
“It was from Someone who wrote a Book, Dear Boy,” Mrs. Whitney said.
“No,” I said. “It was from a little man named Albert Toplady. I met him in a——”
I stopped, staring at him. It was unbelievable. He looked as if an invisible hand had landed him a paralyzing blow in the pit of the stomach. His face just in a fraction of an instant had turned a sickly gray-green, his mouth sagged open stupidly and there were beads of perspiration on his forehead and upper lip.
“Where is it? The letter!” he said.
His voice shook, and his body swayed as he took a step toward me. I thought he was going to grab the bag out of my hand and go through it himself.
“Grace, you’ve got to give it to me! Where is it?”
I stared at Mrs. Whitney, completely bewildered. She was resting back very calmly on her cushions, concentrating on Something Else, I supposed.
“I don’t know where it is, Myron,” I said. “It isn’t here where I left it. Maybe one of the others picked it up by mistake.”
“If they did,” Abigail Whitney said placidly, “I’m sure they will return it, Dear Boy. They wouldn’t open a sealed Letter addressed to anyone Else. It’s one of the things that isn’t Done.”
A dark flush came into Myron’s cheeks. “I wish you’d see if you took it upstairs, Grace,” he said. He had made an effort to get himself under control, but his hands were still trembling and his voice harsh.
“Do, Dear Child,” Mrs. Whitney said.
He followed me out of the room.
“Look, Myron,” I said. “That letter was under my bag, and that’s all I know about it. It is not upstairs.”
The look in his face was as near despair as I’ve ever seen in all my life.
“My God, it’ll ruin me,” he whispered.
I’d have felt very sorry for him if I hadn’t seen almost the same look in Laurel Frazier’s eyes, and for much the same reason.
“It’s sort of the biter bit, isn’t it?” I said.
He stood there for a moment without answering, haggard and terribly diminished, someway. His mouth was trembling and there were actually tears in his eyes.
“Who was in there?” he demanded suddenly.
“Elsie and Sam Phelps, Monk Whitney, Travis Elliot,
