“Everybody, Lieutenant. There’s no one has seen hide nor hair of her.”
“How about the men at the doors?”
“Each one was at his post, sir. She didn’t go out.”
“Then in that case,” said Lieutenant Valcour, “she must still be in.”
The thought was both a bromide and a consolation. Nowadays, Lieutenant Valcour assured himself, people didn’t vanish into thin air; it just wasn’t being done. While concentrating in his mind as to the possible whereabouts of the unfindable Mrs. Endicott, his hands were mechanically placing the piles of letters he had assorted back into the empty drawer. He had shoved the letter from Marge Myles carefully to one side. Any reading of it would have to come later, after he had hit upon some logical explanation for this sudden move on the part of Mrs. Endicott.
“He must have been some stepper, Lieutenant,” Cassidy said, eyeing with interest one disappearing pack of pink envelopes.
“Quite a stepper, Cassidy.” … Where could she hide? And why should she? …
“Each one of them piles from some dame?”
“That’s right, Cassidy—each one from some dame.” … She wanted to get out of the house, one could be pretty sure of that, and go to the hospital to see Hollander. But how could she have got past the men at the doors? She couldn’t. …
“It certainly does beat hell what some guys can get away with, Lieutenant.”
“But it never does beat hell, Cassidy.” … And Hansen had been out around the backyards, even supposing she had attempted anything so