The girl took it and glanced insolently at the hatrack. Finding that there was nothing there or anywhere else in the hall of an easily portable nature, she tossed her head and flounced to the stairs. It seemed an eternity to the impatient Lawrence before a door closed hastily above, and he heard the sound of light footsteps hurrying down from the top floor. Presently a girl came in sight on the stairs, a rather nice-looking girl, with trim black hair and fresh coloring. As she saw Barry, she slackened her pace, and made the last few steps very slowly, indeed, pausing at the foot with one hand still resting on the balustrade. "I’m very sorry, indeed, to have troubled you," Lawrence said, with a pleasant smile, "but I came to see Miss Rives, and the girl insists she isn’t here." The blank stare of amazement she gave him struck Barry with a chill sense of foreboding. "Miss Rives!" the girl repeated slowly. "You can’t be talking about Shirley Rives?" "That’s just who I mean. She came here last night. She had—er—left her boarding place rather suddenly, and when I—met her downtown she was on her way to see you." For a second the girl looked keenly into his eyes, without speaking. Then she gave her head an odd shake. "You don’t look like a person who is joking," she said quietly, "so I s’pose you’ve made a mistake some way. I haven’t seen Shirley Rives in two months, and more." Barry’s jaw dropped, and some of the ruddy glow left his cheeks. The thing was impossible. He had left Shirley on this very doorstep not twenty-four hours before—had even seen her enter the house on her way to this friend’s room. And now they had the audacity to tell him that she had never been here. There was something queer about the whole matter, and he meant to find out what it was before he left the place. "I haven’t made a mistake," he said sternly. "I brought Miss Rives to this door myself a little before eleven last night. She looked up at your window, and when she saw it lighted she said it was all right; that Sally must still be here, because she used to read till all hours. She rang the bell, and I waited till the door opened and she went inside. And now you want me to believe that you never——" He broke off abruptly, startled at the look on the girl’s face. She had grown pale, and her eyes were dilated until they looked like holes burned in a white sheet. Her hands—slender, well-kept hands they were—were clenched tightly, and as Barry stopped she flung them up with an odd, eloquent gesture. "It’s the truth!" she gasped, in a frightened voice. "I haven’t seen her—I swear it!" Her lips were trembling, and she caught them swiftly between her teeth. "Something’s happened to her—it must have! Was she down in her luck? Had she lost her job?"