studio to meet Alec and had not been seen since. No word from him had they had that night or the day before, and now, on the second day since his disappearance, their anxiety was evident.
But during lunch—they ate at a small restaurant in the neighbourhood, near the Montparnasse railway station—Elinor kept up a gay and rapid conversation, and persisted in speaking of Starwick’s disappearance as a great lark—the kind of thing to be expected from him.
“Perfectly insane, of course!” she cried, with a gay laugh. “But then, it’s typical of him: it’s just the kind of thing that kind would do. Oh, he’ll turn up, of course,” she said, with quiet confidence, “—he’ll turn up in a day or two, after some wild adventure that no one in the world but Francis Starwick could have had…. I mean!” she cried, “picking that Frenchman—Alec—up the way he did the other night. Utterly mad, of course!” she said gaily. “—But then, there you are! It wouldn’t be Frank if he didn’t!”
“I see nothing very funny about it,” said Ann bluntly. “It looks like a pretty rotten mess to me. We know nothing at all about that Frenchman—who he is, what he does; we don’t even know his name. For all you know he may be one of the worst thugs or criminals in Paris.”
“Oh, I know, my dear—but don’t be absurd!” Elinor protested. “The man’s all right—Frank’s always picking up these people—it always turns out all right in the end—oh, but of course!” she cried, as if dispelling a troubling thought from her mind—“Of course it will! It’s too ridiculous to allow yourself to be upset like this!”
But in spite of her vigorous assurance, her eyes were full of care and of something painful and baffled, an almost naked anguish.
He left them after lunch, promising to meet them again for dinner. Starwick had not come back. When they had finished dinner, the two women went back to the studio to wait for Starwick’s possible return, and Eugene went to look for him in Montmartre, promising to let them know at once if he found Starwick or got news of him. When he got to Montmartre, he made a round first of all the resorts which Starwick had liked best and frequented most, as Eugene remembered them, of course; but no one had seen him since they had last been there all together. Finally, he went to the bistro in the Rue Montmartre, where they had first encountered Alec, and asked the soiled barman with the dark mistrustful eye if he had seen either Alec or Starwick in the past three days. The man eyed him suspiciously for a moment before answering. Then he surlily replied that he had seen neither of them. In spite of the man’s denial, he
