"I can’t find him," went on Harnash. He could scarcely sustain Stephanie’s direct and piercing gaze. He forced himself to look at her, however. "I don’t know where he is," he repeated.
"Everywhere. I called up his apartment on Park Avenue at ten o’clock. They said he wasn’t there and hadn’t been there all night. I started my man out at once in a taxicab, jumped into my own car, and I’ve been everywhere--the office, his clubs--I’ve even had my secretary and clerks telephone all the hotels on the long chance that he might be at one of them."
"And you haven’t found a trace of him? George Harnash--" began Stephanie, but Harnash was too quick for her; he did not allow her to finish.
"You will forgive me," he went on; "I did even more than that in my alarm. I finally notified the police on the chance that he might have been er--er--brought in."
He shot a warning look at Stephanie that checked further inquiries from her.
"Why should he be brought in?" asked Josephine Treadway, who had no reason for not asking the question.
"Why, you see," went on Harnash, "it’s desperately hard to tell, and I’d rather die than mention it, but under the circumstances I suppose--"
"Well, we had a little dinner last night at--well, never mind where."
"Yes, but I imagine ours was--er--different. At any rate, it didn’t break up until quite late, or, I should say, early in the morning, and we were not--quite ourselves."
"But Derrick is the most abstemious of men."
"Exactly; so am I, and when that kind go under it’s worse than--you understand," he added helplessly.
"Why--er--I’ll make a clean breast of it."
"Well, then, we were right enough when the dinner broke up. Derrick and I left the others to their own devices. He had arranged to spend the night with me. We stopped at one or two places down town, but reached my quarters in Washington Square about two or three o’clock."
Harnash paused and swallowed hard. It was an immensely difficult task to which he had compelled himself, although so far he had told nothing but the truth.
"Go on," said Josephine Treadway impatiently as the pause lengthened.
"He changed his mind after we put the limousine in the garage and insisted on going back to his own rooms."
"Well, Miss Treadway, I couldn’t help it, and, to be frank, I didn’t try. You see we were neither of us very sure of ourselves and--and--"