"His report in the morning will tell."
"I would sooner have a report as to Mrs. Clephane's whereabouts,"
Harleston remarked.
"I can't see what good she would be to them now?" said Ranleigh. "She
hasn't a thing they want."
"Granted; yet where is she? moreover, she promised me to do nothing
unusual and to beware of traps."
"She has the feminine right to reconsider," Ranleigh reminded him.
"However, I'll instruct the bureau to get busy and--"
"Wait until morning," Harleston interjected. "If Mrs. Clephane hasn't
appeared by nine o'clock, I'll telephone you."
Harleston leaned back in his chair frowning. Washington was not a large
city, yet under certain circumstances she could be lost in it--and stay
lost, with all the efforts of the police quite unavailing to find her.
It seemed improbable that she had been abducted; as Ranleigh had said,
they had nothing to gain from her. She could neither advance their plans
nor hinder them; she was purely a negative quantity. Spencer might be
striking at him through Mrs. Clephane, intending to hold her surety for
his neutrality, or to feed her own revenge, or maybe both. Yet, somehow,
he could not hold to the notion; it was too petty for their game.
Moreover, Spencer knew that it would be ineffective, and she was not one
to waste time in methods, petty or inefficient.
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