The servants were uneasy and even the dogs seemed dejected; Joseph puttered about, looking aged and careworn, and the maids seemed to drink endless tea in the kitchen and to be reluctant to go upstairs.
At three o’clock, Jim not having arrived and Judy being out with the dogs, I decided to call Katherine once more.
It seemed to me that she might have a clue of some sort.
She knew Sarah better than any of us, and I felt that at least she should be told.
But all I obtained from her was a thorough scolding for harboring Judy.
“Well!” she said when she heard my voice.
“It’s about time!
You tell Judy to come right home.
It’s outrageous, Elizabeth.”
“What is outrageous?” I asked.
“Her chasing that idiotic youth.
Now listen, Elizabeth; I want you to keep him out of the house.
It’s the very least you can do, if she won’t come home.”
“I haven’t seen any youth yet,” I explained mildly.
“And I’m not worrying about Judy. I have something else to worry about.” Her voice was shrill when I told her.
“Missing?” she said.
“Sarah missing!
Haven’t you any idea where she is?”
“None, except that I’m afraid it’s serious.
The police are working on it.”
“Maybe I’d better come down.”
I checked that at once.
Katherine is an intense, repressed woman, who can be exceedingly charming, but who can also be exceedingly stubborn at times.
As that stubbornness of hers was to work for us later on I must not decry it, but I did not want her then.
“You can’t do anything,” I said.
“And Howard probably needs you.
Judy says he’s not so well.”
“No,” she said slowly.
“No. He’s not as well as he ought to be.”
She said nothing more about coming down, but insisted that I see Jim at once.
“He was fond of Sarah,” she said, “and he really has such a good mind.
I know he will help you.”
She had no other suggestions to make, however.
Sarah had no family, she was certain of that.
Her great fear seemed to be that she had been struck by an automobile, and as that was mild compared with what I was beginning to think I allowed it to rest at that.
I had made no promise as to Judy, which was as well, for when she came back she was accompanied by a cheerful looking blond youth who was evidently the one in question, and who was presented to me only as Dick.
“This is Dick,” was what Judy said.
“And he is a nice person, of poor but honest parents.”
Dick merely grinned at that; he seemed to know Judy, and almost before I knew it he and I were standing in the lower hall, and Judy was dropping lead pencils down the airshaft.
“Does that sound like it, Elizabeth Jane?” she would call to me at the top of her voice.
“Or this?”
To save my life I could not tell.
They seemed to be less sharp, less distinct, but I was not certain.
Indeed, when Mr. Carter, for that turned out to be the youth’s family name, tapped with his penknife on the marble mantel in the drawing room, the effect seemed rather more like what I had heard.
“That for Wallie!” said Judy, coming down.
“That pencil’s probably been there for ages.
I’d like to see his face when he finds six more there!
And now let’s have tea.”
I liked the boy.
Indeed, I wondered what Katherine could have against him.