“I tell you I can’t slacken up, and she’s going ten miles an hour. You’ll break your leg if you jump, and then where’ll you be?” “I might be on their sidewalk, and then you could ring their bell, and they’d take me in.” “And have you suing the company for damages? Oh, no, sir. I’m sorry, but it can’t be helped. The company won’t charge you for the extra time.” “No, I don’t think it will,” said Thornton savagely, the more so as his foot gave a twinge of pain just then. * * * * * “There was no one in sight, ma’am,” said Marie, when she returned. “Probably he had an order for a story and got absorbed in it and forgot us,” said Mr. Marten; but this conjecture did not seem to suit Annette, for it did not fit what she knew of his character. “Possibly he was dropped in an elevator,” said Mr. Burton. “Strain on elevators, particularly these electrical ones, is tremendous. Some of ’em have got to drop. And a dropping elevator is no respecter of persons. You and I may be in one when it drops. Probably he was. Sure, I hope not, but as he is known to be the soul of punctuality, we must put forward some accident to account for his lateness. People aren’t always killed in elevator accidents. Are they, my dear?” “Mr. Burton,” said his wife, “I wish you would give your morbid thoughts a rest. Don’t you see that Annette is sensitive?” “Sensitive--with some one dying every minute? It’s merely because she happens to know Orville that his death would be unpleasant. If a man in the Klondike were to read of it in the paper he wouldn’t remember it five minutes. But I don’t say he was in an elevator. Maybe some one sent him an infernal machine for a Christmas present. May have been blown up in a manhole or jumped from his window to avoid flames. Why, there are a million ways to account for his absence.” Marie had opened the parlor windows a moment before, as the house was warm, and now there came the humming of a rapidly moving automobile. Mingled with it they heard distinctly, although faintly, “Mr. Marten, here I go.” It gave them all an uncanny feeling. The fish was left untouched, and for a moment silence reigned. Then Mr. Marten sprang from the table and ran to the front door. He got there just in time to see an automobile dashing around a corner and to hear a distinctly articulated imprecation in the well-known voice of Orville Thornton. In evening clothes and bare-headed, Mr. Marten ran to Fortieth Street, and saw the vehicle approaching Sixth Avenue, its occupant still hurling strong language upon the evening air. Mr. Marten is something of a sprinter, although he has passed the fifty mark, and he resolved to solve the mystery. But before he had covered a third of the block in Fortieth Street he saw that he could not hope to overtake the runaway automobile, so he turned and ran back to the house, rightly surmising that the driver would circle the block.